(Disclaimer: This transcript is auto-generated and may contain mistakes.)

Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Welcome to Faith Fort Baptist Church. Please take your hymnals. Please take your hymnals. Can you hear me? Can you hear me? Alright, good. Number 411. Number 411, hold the fort. On this first verse, number 411. Oh my comrades, sing it out. Oh my comrades, see the signal Waving in the sky Reinforcements now appearing Bitterly is nigh Hold the fort for I am counting Jesus' signal still Waving the answer back to heaven By thy grace we do See the mighty host and then sing Singing leading high Fighting in the roundest valley Courage all the stars Hold the fort for I am counting Jesus' signal still Waving the answer back to heaven By thy grace we do See the glorious banner waving Hear the trumpet call Hear our leader's name we'll triumph Over every foe Hold the fort for I am counting Jesus' signal still Waving the answer back to heaven By thy grace we will Years and long the battle wages But our help is near Onward comes our great calendar Cheer, I come next year Hold the fort for I am counting Jesus' signal still Waving the answer back to heaven By thy grace we do Lord, thank you for this opportunity to be here tonight and I pray that you would fill Pastor Anderson with your Holy Spirit and please help this sermon to be edifying for all of us. It's in Christ's name I pray, Amen. Amen, please turn over to hymn number 308, number 308 I surrender all, number 308 Sing it on this verse, number 308 All to Jesus I surrender All to Him I freely give I will ever love And trust in Him I surrender all I surrender all All to me my blessed Savior I surrender all All to Jesus I surrender all We at His feet I bow Earth in measures all for saving Saving Jesus, save me now I surrender all I surrender all All to Him my blessed Savior I surrender all All to Jesus I surrender May we save your holy coming Let me feel the Holy Spirit Truly know that thou art mine I surrender all I surrender all All to Thee my blessed Savior I surrender all All to Jesus I surrender Lord I give myself to Thee Fill me with Thy love and power Let my blessing fall on me I surrender all I surrender all All to He my blessed Savior I surrender all If you don't have a bulletin, slip up your hand nice and high. We'll get to you with one. On the inside we have our service times. Sunday mornings at 1030 is our preaching service. Sunday nights at 6. Wednesday nights at 7 is our Bible study. And tonight we will be in Psalm 70. We've got the soul winning times listed there below as well as salvation and baptisms. Across the page is the Bible memory passage working on John chapter 3 verses 5 through 8. And then don't forget that this Saturday is the chili cook off on the back. October 31st. So that starts at 4.30. Goes to 7.30. And if you want to enter a chili you've got to have it here before 5 o'clock and you have to be one of the first 20 people. So that should be no problem. I don't think we're going to have a whole lot of people beyond 20. Usually that's about how many people enter. So just be sure that you're here on time if you want to be part of the contest because look the stakes are huge. Look at these prizes folks. These are no joke. And what's that? Yeah. So $75 honey baked ham gift certificate is the grand prize. $50 for second place. $25 at Whole Foods is third place. Many will enter. Few will win. Many are called. Few are chosen. And then this Sunday is also going to be the donuts and coffee before the service. And then the preaching class is on pause right now until the end of the year. And then other events are listed there below. There are a few ladies activities coming up. Those are for also girls 13 and up can go to those. And there's the ladies game night on the 6th. And then the cookie decorating on December 4th. So that's about it for announcements. Let's go ahead and count up the soul winning for the past few days. Going back to Monday. Anything from Monday. Alright we got two plus one. Anything else from Monday? How about Tuesday? Anything from Tuesday? Gotcha. Okay got it. Anything else from Tuesday? And then how about today? I know we had two in the church van outside of the van. Another one there. Okay got it. Anything else from today? Alright very good. Keep up the great work on soul winning. With that come lead us in our next song. Alright we're going to sing Psalm 117. Psalm 117 you should find at inserting your hymnals. Psalm 17. Let's sing it out. Praise the Lord all ye nations praise him all ye people for his merciful kindness is great toward us and the truth of the Lord in good and for heaven praise he the Lord praise he the Lord praise the Lord all ye nations praise him all ye people for his merciful kindness is great toward us and the truth of the Lord in good and for heaven praise he the Lord praise he the Lord And please turn your hymn to 204. Number 204 songs in the mountains. Number 204 there are songs in the mountains sing it out on this verse. Number 204. Sing sing sing sing sing sing sing sing sing sing for I'm happy in Jesus there's a song in my soul some days are sadness but his Savior is with me for he bears all my burdens and he comforts my heart he is here when I need him he will never be bought sing sing sing sing sing sing sing for I'm happy in Jesus there's a song in my soul some days are sadness but his Savior is with me for I'm happy in Jesus there's a song in my soul some days are sadness but his Savior is with me so I sing sing sing sing sing sing sing sing sing sing oh I'm happy in Jesus with the song in my soul my Spirit's in comfort and to teach Him to guide I'm a father to hear Preach forever, taste the heart and the throne. So I sing on my journey, for I'm never alone. So I sing, sing, sing. Sing, sing, sing. For I'm happy in Jesus, there's a song in my soul. All right, this time we'll pass our offering plates around. As the plates go around, let's turn to Psalm 70. Psalm 70, as we always do, we'll read the entire chapter, beginning verse number one. Psalm 70, follow along with Brother Hester as he reads. Psalm 70, the Bible reads, make haste, O God, to deliver me. Make haste to help me, O Lord. Let them be ashamed and confounded that seek after my soul. Let them be turned backward and put to confusion that desire my hurt. Let them be turned back for a reward of their shame that say, aha, aha. Let all those that seek thee rejoice and be glad in thee. And let such as love thy salvation say continually, let God be magnified. But I am poor and needy. Make haste unto me, O God. Thou art my help and my deliverer. O Lord, make no tarrying. Dear Lord, we just thank you for your salvation and your guidance, Lord. And we just pray for the sermon tonight, Lord, and ask that you fill Pastor Anderson with your Holy Spirit as he preaches your word. And we pray these things in Jesus' name, amen. Amen. So Psalm 70 starts out there in verse number one. Make haste, O God, to deliver me. Make haste to help me, O Lord. Let them be ashamed and confounded that seek after my soul. Let them be turned backward and put to confusion that desire my hurt. So this is one of many Psalms where David is, again, preaching about his enemies that are attacking him and people that are wicked and they desire to harm him. And he's actually praying for God to harm these people. He's praying for bad things to happen to these people. So these type of Psalms are known as imprecatory Psalms because he's praying a curse upon these wicked people. He says, for example, in verse three, let them be turned back for a reward of their shame that say, aha, aha. And then in verse four, he says, let all those that seek thee rejoice and be glad in thee. And let such as love thy salvation say continually, let God be magnified. Now, I think this is the key to understanding this passage because the Bible does teach that we are not supposed to just fight back against our personal enemies. We're not supposed to curse our personal enemies or hate our enemies. You know, we're supposed to love our enemies, bless those that curse us, do good to those that despitefully use us and persecute us. But in this case, we can see that these enemies that he's praying against, that he's basically placing this curse upon, they're clearly not the kind of people that are rejoicing or being glad in the Lord. And they don't love his salvation because there's a contrast being set up here. I want these people that are seeking after my soul that are trying to destroy me, I want them to be turned back. I want them to be put to confusion. I want them to be rewarded according to their evil deeds. But he's saying, on the other hand, let all those that seek thee rejoice and be glad in thee. And let such as love thy salvation say continually, let God be magnified. So there are some super wicked people in this world, evil people, upon whom it would not be wrong to pray a curse upon them or pray for bad things to happen to them. Now, some people take an overly simplistic view of this subject and basically just say, well, we should just never curse anyone. We should never wish ill upon anyone. We should never hate anyone. We just need to love every single person and bless every single person. And that sounds good on the surface. It sounds right. It sounds great. But that doesn't mean that it's true. And that is an overly simplistic view of the world. That's an overly simplistic view of what the Bible teaches. Now, other people get a wrong view where they think, well, in the Old Testament, you would do that. You'd curse enemies. But in the New Testament, Jesus changed that. And now you love your enemies and bless your enemies. But in fact, the Bible in the Old Testament teaches us to love our enemies repeatedly. Let's look at one example. Let's go over to Proverbs, chapter number 24. But while you're turning to Proverbs 24, let me give you a good example of this. In the Mosaic law, it clearly says that if the ox or the ass of your enemy falls into a ditch, you're to help it out. You're to do good unto even your enemy in that regard and help out their animal and help them get their property back. But look at Proverbs 24. And the Bible also teaches this in the Old Testament. It says in verse 17, rejoice not when thine enemy falleth, and let not thine heart be glad when he stumbleth, lest the Lord see it, and it displease him, and he turn away his wrath from him. So if we have an enemy and something bad happens to our enemy, we are supposed to control that celebration and not just be like, yeah, burn, sucker, you know, yeah. And that could be a temptation when there's somebody that's our enemy that we would just get excited and rejoice. You gotta control that because the Bible says right here, rejoice not when thine enemy falleth. So don't get excited about that or rejoice. And that might be the natural emotion, but just control that is what he's saying. Because if you do get too excited, start rejoicing and getting happy about your enemy failing or falling or being harmed. It says the Lord might see that and it might displease him. And he might turn away his wrath from him. Even if he was mad at that guy, when he sees you getting too excited and rejoicing, he might turn away his wrath from that guy and turn it on you and start punishing you because he doesn't like your attitude, okay. And you want him to keep punishing that guy. So you better control that celebration, all right. But the thing is, the difference between our enemies and the Lord's enemies is what we always need to distinguish and we need to keep those two things separate. Now, of course, the Lord's enemies, in a sense, we could count them as our enemies. Like David said, I hate those that hate you and I count them my enemies. But when the Bible tells us to love our enemies, that's our personal enemies. And here's the thing about our personal enemies, that doesn't mean that they're necessarily horrible people or wicked reprobates or haters of God. There are people that hate us that don't necessarily hate God. There are people who do wrong to us, lie about us or slander us or harm us in some way that aren't necessarily haters of God. And so those kinds of people, we don't wanna just pour out our wrath on them or pray curses against them or get excited when bad things happen to them because of the fact that God might change his mind toward those people and back off from those people, as it says here in Proverbs. But there are some people, of course, that are extremely rotten people that hate the Lord. And that's the difference, they're the enemies of the Lord. They're not just our enemies, they're actually haters of God. Now, if you would go to Matthew chapter five, Matthew chapter five, and the Bible does tell us that we should not love those that hate the Lord. The Bible says in Second Chronicles chapter 19 verse two, it says, shouldest thou help the ungodly and love them that hate the Lord? Therefore is wrath upon thee from the Lord thy God. So in Second Chronicles 19 two, he's saying, you could have God's wrath on you for loving those who hate the Lord, helping the ungodly. So we don't wanna team up with super wicked people. We don't wanna bless super wicked people or benefit them in any way. We don't wanna partake in their evil deeds. The Bible says, for example, if any man come to you and bring not this doctrine, receive him not into your house, neither bid him Godspeed for he that biddeth him Godspeed is a partaker of his evil deeds. So you don't wanna have this attitude that says, well, just to be safe, I'm just gonna love everybody just to be safe. I'm just gonna bless everybody just to be safe. That's not safe because God said, don't love those who hate the Lord, don't help the ungodly. And God says that if you bid Godspeed unto people bringing a false gospel, you're a partaker of their evil deeds. And we don't wanna be a partaker of someone else's evil by assisting them and helping them and blessing them. So it's important that we understand the distinction. For example, some people have taken this doctrine of loving your enemies and tried to say, well, we should love a violent rapist. We should love child molesters. We should love mass murderers. It doesn't make any sense, but they say, oh, love your enemies. But hold on, those people aren't my enemies. You know, if I hear about some violent rapist, if I hear about some child molester and I say, you know, may that person be destroyed, you know, may that person die quickly, you know, cause you'd wish death upon a person like that that would go around harming children and brutally assaulting people just at random because they're just a sick person. You know, people would say, well, that's not loving your enemies, but here's the thing, it's not that that person did anything to me to make them my enemy. It's just that that person is an evil enemy of God, enemy of all righteousness, enemy of humanity, enemy of children everywhere. That's not my enemy. When the Bible tells me to love my enemy, that's talking about someone who does something wrong to me personally, okay? That would be like someone at work lies and says that I'm the one who broke something when they're the one who broke it. You know, obviously that person is my enemy. Well, the Bible says, love your enemies. Bless those that curse you. And so we should pray for them that despitefully use us and persecute us because here's the thing, that guy who lied about you on the job, it doesn't mean that he's some horrible reprobate. Doesn't mean that he's some evil, sick, violent criminal just cause he threw you under the bus or someone cuts you off in traffic and you just get angry and enraged and start screaming. That's wrong. You know, you shouldn't just be angry without a cause and you shouldn't just curse someone or hate someone or get enraged at someone just because they did you wrong. You know, they cut you off, they took your spot or whatever. You know, that's the wrong kind of anger. That's the wrong kind of hate. That's the wrong kind of cursing. But the Bible says there's a time to love and a time to hate. And so we need to understand that yes, there is a time when hatred would be appropriate when someone is a very evil, wicked, reprobate type person. Now here's what Jesus said in Matthew chapter five on the Sermon on the Mount about loving your enemies. It says in verse 43, you have heard that it had been said, thou shalt love thy neighbor and hate thine enemy. Now again, a lot of people will twist that verse and say that that's what the Old Testament taught. The Old Testament never taught that. The Old Testament always taught you to love your enemies and this is not a new teaching, but it's Jesus expounding upon the Old Testament. Because if you look at the rest of the things he taught, he's not teaching things that are new necessarily. He's taking Old Testament teachings and reiterating them, reinforcing them, and just basically asking you to raise the bar a little bit of what was typically being taught was the right thing to do. He's actually teaching you an even higher level of morality, a higher level of righteousness, but he's not negating what the Old Testament taught. Everything that the Old Testament taught was correct because it came from God in the first place. He's building upon that and he's augmenting it and taking it to the next level. And when he says you have heard that it had been said, thou shalt love thy neighbor and hate thine enemy, there's no Bible verse like that. He's not saying that's what the Bible said. He's just saying you heard that it had been said. Somebody said that. But I say unto you, verse 44, love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you, that you may be the children of your father which is in heaven, for he maketh his son to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love them which love you, what reward have you? Do not even the publicans the same? And if you salute your brethren only, what do you more than others? Do not even the publican so? Be ye therefore perfect even as your father which is in heaven is perfect. And so when he's telling us here to love our enemies, he's saying don't just love those that love you, even love people who don't love you. Even love those who hate you. Even love those who are your enemies. But this is a far cry from what people are trying to teach, which is love everyone. This does not say love everyone. This is talking about love people who do you wrong. And these are two very different things. And here's the problem. If you were to take this and apply it to everyone and just say we're supposed to bless everyone, bless violent rapists, bless pedophiles, bless the Pope, bless false prophets, bless the Antichrist, if you were gonna take it and try to teach that, you know what you're gonna have to do? You're gonna have to take 19 Psalms from the Book of Psalms and throw them in the trash. Because you have 19 Psalms where David is doing what? Cursing the wicked. And in many cases, cursing his enemies when they are also the Lord's enemies. You know, when those two things overlap, then he's gonna pray horrible curses on them. Other times, we see many examples in the Book of Psalms of David loving his enemies, doing good to his enemies. There are verses like that where he talks about, you know, that for he's good and they're evil to him and he loves them and he was forgiving to them and yet they rewarded his good with evil. So we don't wanna take the simplistic view that says, okay, let's just ignore 19 Psalms and pretend like they don't exist and just change this to saying love everybody. No, it's talking about loving people who do you wrong. And we should all as Christians be practicing this in our neighborhood. Our neighbor does something we don't like. You know, we should overcome evil with good. Someone at work does something wrong to us, overcome evil with good. People in our family, extended family, overcome that evil with good. Don't just always requite evil for evil. You know, well, he hit me, so I'm gonna hit him back. Wrong. Well, he took from me, I'm gonna take from him. He lied about me. Well, you know what? I'm gonna pay him back. Hey, the Bible says vengeance belongeth unto me, sayeth the Lord, I will repay. If your enemy hungers, feed him. If he thirsts, give him to drink, Romans chapter 12. And so the teaching of scripture is consistent on this, but it doesn't mean love everyone. It means love your personal enemies. But the Bible teaches elsewhere that we're to hate the Lord's enemies, okay? And that it's okay to curse. And in fact, it's even good to curse the Lord's enemies. Because people who hate the Lord, people who've been given over to a reprobate mind, people who are evil, implacable, violent, violators of children, everyone else, may they all rot in hell, may they all die as quickly as possible before they do any more damage than they've already done, because it's already too late for them, according to scripture anyway. So I wanna make sure that we understand that distinction between those two things. Because these, and some people would take an approach and say, well, you know, when David prayed all these curses in Psalms, he was wrong to do that. He's a human being. Hold on a second. This is scripture. And when the Bible quotes Psalms, it says that the Holy Ghost spoke by the mouth of David the prophet, and then it quotes Psalms. So if you believe in the inspiration of scripture, if you believe that the Psalms are God's word, you can't take that view. David is a man after God's own heart. And David is praying in the Holy Ghost. And not only that, but this isn't just someone snuck in on David while he was praying and caught some really fired up prayers, where he got a little carried away and said, you know, break their teeth, oh God, in their mouth. Because that's what he prayed in Psalm 58. Or let them go down quick into hell. You know, oh whoops, did I say that? Did I let that slip out? It's not like somebody snuck up on David and transcribed his prayers, folks. These are prayers that David wrote and he delivered them to the music department. You know, how are they labeled? Look at Psalm 70. Do you see the little label at the top? To the chief musician. What does that mean? What is that little label there that says to the chief musician? It's basically saying he's writing the song and then giving it over to the chief musician so that the chief musician can use it in the music program. It would be like in modern times if we said to the song leader. Here we go. And then I basically, let's say I wrote a song and then I handed it to the song leader. What do I want him to do with that song? I want him to practice it. I want him to coordinate with the other musicians and get some melodies and harmonies and get it all together so that he can then teach it to the congregation and so that hundreds of people can sing it. Thousands of people can sing it. Yay, even millions of people can sing that song. That's what this is, folks. So if we have David writing at least 19 songs, there's 150 Psalms, 19 of them are praying curses on the wicked. How can you ignore that and say that's not a thing? Pastor Anderson made that up. He's a hate preacher. He needs to be put on a watch list because he said that these wicked people should be damned and they should go to hell and that they should die and everything like that. Folks, these are songs that people sang for thousands of years, people have been singing these songs. I mean, the book of Psalms goes back to around 1000 BC approximately. So we're talking about approximately 3000 years old what we're reading right now. You think we're the first church that started putting Psalms to music? Folks, there's nothing new under the sun. In every generation, people have put these Psalms to music. They've sung them. Many have sung all 150 of them, many different places. There are many books containing all 150 of them put to music, not to mention the ancient Hebrews singing these songs and God in his perfect will ordained the Bible to be such as it is. This book is not an accident. It's not like God's people just wrote a bunch of songs and a bunch of them disappeared and a bunch of them survived. No, God ordained that this be the exact collection of 150 Psalms that we have here. These are the 150 that he picked. Hey, he authored these 150 because ultimately the Bible's the word of God. Holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost and that's why the Bible said that the Holy Ghost spoke by the mouth of David the prophet. I'm sorry if you don't like what he said, but this is what the Holy Ghost said. So if you're just gonna take this out, well, that's just David talking. Well, then you could just say, well, that's just Paul talking that's just Matthew, that's just John. Oh, you know that darn that Luke. Folks it's either God's word or it's not. And so if you have two concepts in the Bible that seem to be contradicting, you're understanding something wrong. So you need to look at them both and ask yourself this question. How can both of these things be true? That's how you study the Bible folks. You find two things and you say, well, how can these both be true? Cause I wanna believe both. I believe the whole thing. And by the way, you also go with a majority of scripture too. If you have a hundred verses saying one thing and one verse saying something different, which one do you think you're misunderstanding? Probably the one, right? So here's the thing. If we have 19 chapters of imprecatory Psalms, not to mention other little imprecations thrown in peppered throughout the Psalms, but if we have 19 Psalms that would be classified as an imprecatory Psalm, and then we have a mountain of other evidence of 2 Chronicles 19 two, Ecclesiastes chapter three, you know, that's a lot that needs to be acknowledged. And then we look at Matthew five and we say, okay, I see what Jesus is saying here in Matthew five. Here's what Jesus is saying. When somebody cuts me off in traffic, bless them and don't give them the finger and don't yell at them or curse them or get angry without a cause, bless that person. Hey, when someone at work gets the promotion instead of me, because they've been talking smack about me, hey, congratulate them, bless them, pray for them. When my neighbor sets up a bounce house and starts blasting mariachi music till one in the morning, you know what I'm gonna do? I'm just gonna pray for them to have a great time. And I'm not gonna freak out and go on some vendetta and try to punish them and repay them by blasting Pastor Anderson out of sound system in my backyard or something like that to really make their ears bleed. The point is that we need to understand that Matthew five is teaching something and Psalm 70 is teaching something. And you know what? I'm not just gonna say, well, I'll take Matthew five and ditch Psalm 70. I want both. I want Psalm 58, I want Psalm 139, I want the whole counsel of God. I want the whole package. And so he says in verse one here, make haste, O God, to deliver me. Make haste to help me, O Lord. And when we're in trouble, that's who we need to look to. That's the one who can always bail us out. It doesn't matter what kind of situation you're in, what your problem is, God can bail you out. Now, sometimes God's timing is not our same timing. Sometimes God will help us, but he doesn't help us immediately. That's why David's praying, make haste and help me. I know you like to wait to answer prayer sometimes, God. I know sometimes I pray and the answer comes six months later and a year later. And that's true, that is typically how God works. God doesn't necessarily just answer us that second. You know, I start praying and then there's a knock at the door and it was the publisher's clearing house. You know, that's not typically the way it's gonna work. So that's why he's saying, look, God, not only do I need your help, I need your help now. Please make haste, I'm in a bind here. Make haste, O God, to deliver me. Now, when we read a Psalm like this, we're learning how to pray. These are examples of how to pray. Make haste, O God, to deliver me, make haste to help me. Let them be ashamed and confounded that seek after my soul. Let them be turned backward and put to confusion that desire my hurt. Now, as we talked about earlier, there are times when this would be appropriate to pray and when it would not be appropriate to pray, depending on the person. Sick, horrible, reprobate, depraved individuals, pray it. People that are just crossing you personally, love them, bless them, forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do. But these people are super wicked and he says, let them be turned backward and put to confusion that desire my hurt. And this is something that I've prayed many times before, when there are just horrible reprobate enemies that are just gnashing on me with their teeth, I pray that God would confound them, that God would confuse them, right? Because he says, let them be put to confusion. Let them be turned backwards. I pray that God would mess with their mind and confuse them and confound them. And folks, I've seen this happen so many times that I can't even count, where the enemies of the Lord and the enemies of our church and even people who've gone after me personally, where these people have just done some really stupid things and just shown that God must be putting them under some kind of delusion or something. Like for example, when we threw someone out of the church and then two days later, they're publicly promoting gay pride on their Instagram twice. What kind of a stupid thing to do? They're trying to convince people that I was wrong to throw them out. They're trying to convince people that they're righteous. They're trying to convince people that they were not Judas Iscariots that had crept into our church and snuck into our church. But then basically, they just show everybody what they are within two days of being thrown out. You know what I'd say? God's confusing my enemies right there. You're confused. Only a confused individual would do something like that. And you see other people just saying and doing the most ridiculous things. I remember when that false prophet phony, Tyler Baker, denied the Trinity, got fired, thrown out of the church, and I remember he said, well, I'm gonna put up a video explaining what I believe because Pastor Anderson is trying to say I deny the Trinity and then I'm oneness and then I'm modalist. And I remember praying before he made that video. God, just please help him to actually state what he believes and not to sugarcoat it or try to make it seems like he believes in the Trinity. And he made that video. And as soon as I turned on that video and he started just proclaiming that damnable heresy so clearly, just crystal clear oneness, modalism, denying the Trinity, I literally, these are the words that came out of my mouth when I watched that video, I said, thank you, God. Those are the three words that came out of my mouth. Sure as I'm standing here, I watched that video. I said, thank you, God, thank you, Lord, for making him so stupid as to just open his mouth and tell everybody the wicked garbage so that people will know that he deserved to be fired, that he deserved to be thrown out. Because the last thing you'd want is for these enemies to have a brain in their head and get smart. But you know what, even if they are smart, let me tell you something, God can confound them. This is one of the best things God could do in a battle. You know, there are so many times in the Old Testament where the Israelites are fighting against the Philistines or the Ammonites or the Amorites or the Canaanites or whoever. And you know what God will do? He'll confuse their enemy. He'll help them win by confusing the enemy. And then the enemy starts hitting each other with friendly fire. And then the enemy gets confused and thinks that they have more troops and starts running away and they get scattered and so forth. That's what we want to happen to our enemies. But you know what, we don't wrestle against flesh and blood. It's not our job to take things into our own hands and get violent. And we don't always have to fight back every time we're attacked. And we don't always have to right every wrong and settle every score. You know, vengeance belongs under the Lord. And you can take it to the Lord in prayer and say, Lord, confound my enemies, Lord. Confuse them. Let them be turned backward and put to confusion where they're going the wrong way. They don't know where they're going. Now, again, modern Christianity wants to take this Psalm away from us. They want to take these type of prayers away from us. Here's the problem with that. We're human and human beings get mad. You know, I remember that one bogus teacher in LA. What was his name? Jesse Lee Peterson. Remember that guy? He claimed that he never sins. Folks, everybody sins. There's not a just man upon the earth that doeth good sin or not. But he claims that he never sins and he even claimed, I don't get angry. You say he never gets angry. Folks, everybody gets angry. Everybody gets angry from time to time. That is a sin that is common to man, to lose our temper even over something stupid. So we have a tendency to get mad. And sometimes, by the way, it's righteous to get angry. There's a righteous anger that the Bible teaches. Jesus, in Mark chapter three, looked upon them with anger when they didn't want the man to be healed. And so there's a righteous anger, but 90-some percent of our anger is usually sinful because it's usually us losing our temper about something stupid. It's not a righteous indignation about the things of God. So you see people getting angry. Everybody gets angry. I'm gonna get angry, you're gonna get angry. Well, here's the thing. If you teach people, hey, you can never pray this kind of prayer, well, here's the thing. Then people aren't gonna have a vent for their anger. Our anger sometimes needs a vent. It needs an outlet. The righteous outlet for our anger, many times, is to take this to God in prayer. You know, let's say there's some horrible pedophile. You know, we might be tempted if they harmed someone that we knew or harmed someone that we loved or just we knew about them living in our area, we could be tempted to go be a vigilante and just bring justice to that person and just say, this horrible pedophile, I'm sick of it. You know, he's gonna hurt more people. He's done horrific things. I'm gonna go take care of that guy myself. But you know what? We are not to be vigilantes. That's not what God has called us to do. God has not called us to a physical battle. It's a spiritual battle, and we're to obey the laws of the land. So it's not our job. That has to be dealt with through the court system, and yeah, the court systems are gonna screw it up, but you know what? It's not our job to be a vigilante and take that into our own hands. But you know what? That's how we would feel that we would want to, but here's what we do to have an outlet for that. We take that to the Lord and say, God, kill that sucker. God, destroy that wicked pedophile. Destroy him. Wipe him out. Let him go down quick into hell. And you know what? Then you walk away, and you're like, ah, I feel better now. And then you can go on with your life. You know, you pray about things, and then you walk away knowing, you know what, God's got this under control. I'm not gonna worry about it. Now it's the ball's in God's court. If God lets this guy live, that's up to him. If God kills him, that's up to him. But you know what? The ball's in God's court. I've done what I was here to do, and you just walk away. If someone does you wrong, obviously, if they're just a normal person, and they do you wrong, you pray for good things to happen. You pray for God to bless them. You overcome evil with good. You do good under them. But let's say some horrible rotten reprobate does you wrong, like the people who were after David here in this passage. You know what? It could make you feel better to pray for their doom and destruction, a la Psalms, following the pattern of Psalms, following the godly example of Psalms. You expect me to believe that if I pray exactly like the Psalms, God's gonna get mad at me? Isn't that a ludicrous thought? Like, I read the book of Psalms, and I'm like, okay. I mean, why isn't there a note at the end of the Psalms? Hey, kids, don't try this at home. Folks, if I read Psalms, and I read, and I get it in the context, and I say, okay, I have a situation just like this, and then I prayed that same prayer, God's gonna be like, well, you, David, yes, you, no. God's not a respecter of persons. What's good for the goose is good for the gander. And so he says in verse two, and so here's my point with that. My point with that is that if you don't have that righteous outlet for your anger sometimes to pray to the Lord, if you can't take it to the Lord, then you're gonna take it to the wrong place, and you could get violent, or you could blow up at the wrong people, or just yell at people. And here's the thing. Look, there are situations where you're on your job, and you work for somebody else, and you're wearing their uniform. That's not the time to tell some homo to get AIDS and die. Am I right? I mean, when you're representing so-and-so the company, and you're out doing the service call, you know what? You have to do what your boss wants you to do, and it's not your job at that point to start cursing people in the name of the Lord, okay? Curse that fool on your off time, okay? But I'm saying there's a time and a place to hold your peace when it's not appropriate. To blow off your mouth in certain situations. And especially, you know, obviously, if you're a small child, don't just go blowing off your mouth to adults, because you're gonna say the wrong thing to the wrong person one of these days as well. Or if you're a small adult, then you say the wrong thing to the wrong person. Or if you're a big adult, then you say the wrong thing to the wrong person. I'm just saying, look, obviously you have to use discernment and discretion, and many times the smartest thing to do is to hold your peace. So you know what you do? You just add that person to your prayer list and you just go on with your day. And you know what? We as human beings, sometimes we need an outlet for negative feelings, and prayer is a righteous place to take those negative feelings and take those things to God, and not necessarily vent them on the people around us, and not necessarily take things into our own hands, because obviously God doesn't want us to be a vigilante. That's not what God has called us to do. Hey, if that's what God called us to do, then I'll do it. I'll do whatever God wants me to do, but that's not what the Bible teaches, my friend. And so that's not our calling. We are to fight a spiritual battle, not a physical battle. We're not to be violent. So the Bible says in verse two, let them be ashamed and confounded that seek after my soul. Let them be turned backward and put to confusion the desire of my hurt. Let them be turned back for a reward of their shame that say, aha, aha. Now what's this aha, aha thing? You know. You say, what in the world? You know, you didn't really expect to read the word aha in the Bible, but there it is, twice, no less. You know, when the Bible says that the people say aha, it's basically people gloating about their victory, right? People saying, aha, it's a ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. So, you know, you don't really get that sometimes from the, you gotta say it out loud to really understand the meaning here. So it's ha, ha, ha, ha. It's like, I got you good. So he's saying, let all those, verse three, let them be turned back for a reward of their shame that say, aha, aha. These are the people, sort of like we saw over in Proverbs 24, where they're rejoicing in his destruction and his suffering. Remember, when our enemy suffers, let's say somebody does you wrong, you know, you gotta control that celebration. You know, my dad had a situation where there was this guy that he got in some big screaming fight with this guy at an establishment that he frequented often. And he got into a screaming fight with this guy. And I'm pretty sure it was about Christianity. It was about the Bible. I think this guy was some kind of an atheist or something. And it ended up just becoming like an ugly yelling fight between him and this guy. And a bunch of their friends were there. And this was a place that he's gonna go back to. And, you know, my dad went home that night and he prayed. And he said, God, just please fix this situation because I don't want to be uncomfortable going back there. And, you know, there's been this blow up. So please, God, just resolve this situation. That's what he basically prayed. Two days later, the guy's dead. Guy just died. And it was like, my dad went back there and they're just like, what did you do to this guy? You know, he's just like, what are you? They're like, you're yelling, he's died. But here's the thing though. Now, obviously, you know, what should be, put yourself in my dad's shoes for a second, right? You get in a situation where you get in a screaming fight with somebody, right? Try to use your imagination like it's you. You get in a screaming fight with somebody and then you pray, God, just resolve this. You're not praying like, kill this sucker. You know, you're just saying like, he didn't pray anything like that. He just said, resolve the tension, resolve the tension. Look, if the guy died, here's what you don't want to do. You want to be like, yeah, what now? Who's next? Does anybody else want to mess with me? Anybody else got anything to say? See, here's, yeah, you don't want to be like, aha, aha. Here's the thing, okay, if, you know, I'm putting myself in that situation. To me, it would be like sobering. It would be something that would kind of give you pause. You'd kind of, on one hand, you'd be glad that the situation's resolved, but at the same time, you'd feel a little bit sobered. You'd have kind of a serious view, like, whoa. That's pretty intense. You know, and you don't want to be just dancing on this guy's grave. Does everybody understand what I'm saying? And I'm not, and he didn't dance on the guys. When he told me the story, he told it in a sober manner. But my, does everybody see what I'm saying, though? In a situation like that, you could either just go crazy celebrating. You know, God might look at that, and he might not like that. And what if something was a coincidence? You know, it's probably not a coincidence, but maybe it was a coincidence, who knows? Especially if the conversation was about the things of God, and this guy's blaspheming the Lord, and then my dad prays, and, you know. But the point is, sometimes things could be a coincidence, and you could misinterpret something. And then God sees your celebration dancing on this guy's grave, and he's like, whoa, that guy was gonna die anyway, like, what are you doing? You know, we just want to make sure, and here's the thing. Now let's say that you knew that some guy was some pedophile or some for-sure reprobate, some filthy sodomite, and you heard, and you basically, you know, cursed this guy, and he dies the next day or two days. You know, then, you know, that could be a little celebration in order. Whoo, you know. But the thing is, you know, we gotta be careful though. We don't want to celebrate the wrong things. So we want to make sure that we control that celebration in the vast majority of instances. Okay. So he says, let them be turned back for reward of their shame that say, aha, aha. Another thing I want to point out about these guys that are saying, aha, aha, is that they're clearly enjoying David's destruction, which we just talked about, but not only that, these seem like they're the kind of people who this is what they live for. Now go over to Proverbs chapter four, if you would. There are people, according to the Bible, this is how they get their kicks hurting other people. This is how they get their kicks harming people. This is what they do for fun. They are sick individuals. They're evil. And again, that helps us get the context of why David is praying so harshly in Psalm 70, because of this situation. Look at Proverbs chapter four, verse 14. It says, enter not into the path of the wicked and go not in the way of evil men, avoid it, pass not by it, turn from it and pass away. For they sleep not, except they have done mischief and their sleep is taken away unless they cause some to fall. Do you see that? These people can't go to bed at night until they've hurt someone. They can't go to bed at night until they've caused someone to fall. They can't go to bed at night until they've seduced someone or tempted someone or hurt someone or stolen from someone or killed someone. I mean, there are people out there that are like this. They eat the bread of wickedness and drink the wine of violence. These are the kind of people that basically, this is their bread and butter. This is their meat and drink. Hurting people, it's what they do. It's what they love to do. And so these would be the kind of people described in Psalm 11 when it says, the Lord trieth the righteous but the wicked and him that loveth violence, his soul hated. These people clearly love violence because it says they eat the bread of wickedness and drink the wine of violence. What's wine? Wine is referring to a luxurious drink. That's what this is talking about here. And today, we have all kinds of fun drinks and it's not always just about alcohol. Obviously, many times in the Bible, wine is about alcohol but even just having grape juice would have been a luxury in the ancient world because they didn't have machines. They didn't have refrigerators. And so any kind of a fruit juice would have been a luxury, it would have been expensive. Only rich people would typically have drunk something like that. So that's why wine in the Bible, yes, it talks a lot about alcohol but a lot of times wine in the Bible is a symbol of riches. When it talks about wine and oil, that is symbolizing the finer things in life. So he's saying they eat the bread of wickedness and drink the wine of violence. See, bread is what you need to live. I mean, these people have to hurt somebody before they go to bed. They thrive on other people's suffering but then he says they drink the wine of violence. Wine, you could go the rest of your life without drinking a drop of fruit juice and you could be the healthiest person in the world. You don't have to have fruit juice to be healthy but that's the sugar on top. You know, we sit down and we can eat every single meal for the rest of our life with water but when we pour a Coca-Cola or when we pour a glass of juice or when we pour, that's a luxury, right? That's a bonus. It's not necessary for our nourishment. We call it in our house a fun drink. Hey, you don't need a fun drink at every meal, drink water. Okay, everybody can get a fun drink. That's how it works in our house. So these people's wine is violence. You know what that means? They love violence, what they do. They love it. They thrive on it. It's their meat and drink and it's their fun. Now, what does it say about these people in verse 14? It says, enter not into the path of the wicked and go not in the way of evil men. Avoid it, pass not by it, turn from it and pass away. Now, let me ask you this. Is it saying go confront these people? Go confront these people. Go be a vigilante and deal with these people. He's saying, just stay away from these people. The best thing you can do is just stay far away from them. And here's the thing. You know, it's possible that in a few days there might be some serious wickedness in our country that might happen about six days from now, seven days from now. There could be some serious wickedness. And look, not everybody involved in the wickedness is gonna be a Proverbs 4 kind of guy. But let me tell you something, among the crowds there could be some Proverbs 4 guys among the crowds. Does everybody know what I'm talking about? Because look, we don't know who's gonna get elected next Tuesday or if there's gonna be too many hanging chads to know who has been elected. Nobody understands that unless they're my age. But I was trying to explain to young people what a hanging chad is. They're like, a chad? I thought that was like a really cool guy or something. I'm like, no, different kind of chad. So the point is that we don't know who's gonna get elected. It could be Trump, it could be Biden. But I have a sneaking suspicion that if Trump happens to get reelected, there are gonna be certain segments of the population that don't like that very much. And they seem to tend to be the kind of people that like to go out at night and start lighting things on fire, throwing bricks through windows, trashing businesses. I mean, and this isn't that far fetched, since for the last two nights in a row in Philadelphia, there's been burning and looting going on and there's been rioting going on. Over some career criminal who had some super long rap sheet, he rushed on the police and got shot. I don't know all the details. But anyway, this is becoming a recurring thing in our country now, the rioting and the looting. But I have a feeling that if Trump gets reelected, that there's gonna be some serious riots or looting or vandalism the next day. It's very likely. And here would be my advice to you if that happens. Pass not by it. Avoid it. Don't just go there as a thrill seeker or go there as a vigilante. You're not going to be just Rambo taking on like 500 people or 1,000 people. That only works on movies. That's not real life. OK, so you don't want to go out there and just try to be the one-man army commando. And you're just, ah, you know. It's not going to work. And you're probably going to get arrested. Now, look. If they come into the residential areas, they're going to get shot. But I don't think even they're stupid enough to do that. I've heard some of these rioters and looters say, we're coming to the middle class areas. We're coming to the white neighborhoods, quote unquote. Which there's no such thing as a white neighborhood in Phoenix. Because every neighborhood here is mixed. I've never seen a white neighborhood. You go soul winning and it's ethnically diverse. You go to the richest neighborhoods of South Tempe, I've had a bunch of Hindus open the door in those rich neighborhoods. All those computer programmers and engineers. Or they own a lot of convenience stores or something. Because they've got some money down there. You know, there are all kinds of people. And you'll run into black people, Hispanics. I mean, you run into everything. But the point is, they threaten to come into suburbia. Folks, that will never happen because there's going to be a gun behind every blade of grass in suburbia. I mean, what percentage of homes in Arizona do you think are armed? Think about it. Let's say, and look, it's probably like 60% at least. Probably 80%. But let's just get crazy for a second. And let's say that 10% of people have a gun and are ready to use it. Well folks, that means the 10th door that you knock, you're getting shot, right? If you break into that 10th door, you're doomed. So if throngs of looters went into the neighborhoods, it would be a bloodbath for the looters. Not going to happen. I'll tell you where they're going to loot. And pillage is going to be in the downtown areas, in the business districts, where they feel that they can get away with it. Now here's the thing. When this happened in Phoenix, when they converged on the Scottsdale Fashion Center, the police stood down and just let it go. And they ended up trashing the place. But the next day, the police apologized. And the next night, the police got their act together and they shut it down. And they arrested like 78 people. And then they even started going over surveillance footage and arresting people in the past. So I think that here in Phoenix, that the police are probably going to take care of it. I don't think we're going to have an issue here. But think about places like Seattle and Portland and every, I mean, those places, it could get ugly. We don't know. But here's my advice. Let's say it does happen in Phoenix, which I think is doubtful. But maybe somebody is listening to the sermon over the internet or whatever. Or maybe it does happen here. You know what? My advice to you would always be stay away from it. Stay home. Just close your door, lock it, clean your guns, and just pop some popcorn. And just have a night in. Make some hot chocolate. And just watch it on YouTube, my friend. Watch it live. If you really have to rubberneck it, that's what YouTube's for, if you just have to be a rubbernecker. But here's the thing, though. What you don't want to do is say, hey, let's go down there. And look, you say, who would think that? Well, hmm, teenagers? Folks, this is how teenagers think. I know because I was a teenager and I would have been down there rubbernecking. And you know what? It's not wise. It's foolish. You avoid it. Don't pass by it. Stay far away from it because you don't want to go down there and bite off more than you can chew. God isn't telling you to go down there. Well, God's going to protect me, except God didn't tell you to go down there. It's better just to avoid it, pass not by it. That's what God told you to do. That's not our fight. OK, let the police take care of that. I'm going to guard my own home and my own family, but I'm not here to guard the entire city as a one-man army. I've gone paintballing enough to know that it's a good thing I didn't join the military because I would die in a firefight, because I got shot a lot. And I went paintballing once, and I got shot a lot. And I was just thinking, it's a good thing I'm not in war, because I would have died a bunch of times. I don't know if it's just because people are just like, hey, I want to shoot Pastor Anderson. Maybe I was being specifically targeted. I was being profiled. Like, hey, this is my chance to get Pastor Anderson. But I definitely got shot, and I was just thinking, man, it's a good thing this is a game. Folks, it is in the movies, where you're just dodging bullets, and the stakes are real. So anyway, back to Psalm 70. Let me finish up here. It says in Psalm 70, let them be turned back for a reward of their shame that say, a-ha, a-ha. Let all those that seek thee rejoice and be glad in thee, and let such as love thy salvation say continually, let God be magnified. And so the thing I want to point out here again is that David is not just selfishly praying a curse on his personal enemies. That's not what he's doing here. Because number one, these are Proverbs 4 guys who love violence. They're super evil, rejoicers in iniquity. And these people, he's saying, let them be destroyed and turned back and put to confusion. But the ultimate motive is that God be magnified. So basically, he's saying, God, you destroy these wicked people so that you might be magnified. So at the end of the day, David isn't just selfishly wanting things to go well for himself at the expense of other people. He's praying for his enemies to be destroyed because he's a man of God, because he's the king of Israel, and because he wants the Lord to be magnified. He wants God to be magnified. Look, what happens if David loses these battles and the enemy comes in? They're going to set up an image of Molech. They're setting up Ashtaroth. So he's got to defend for the Lord. So at the end of the day, this all goes back to verse 4. At the end, let God be magnified. It's not about us being magnified. It's about God being magnified. Verse 5, but I'm poor and needy. Make haste unto me, O God. Thou art my help and my deliverer. O Lord, make no tarrying. So he ends the psalm exactly how he started it. He starts out the psalm saying, make haste, O God, to deliver me, make haste to help me. And then if we go backwards from the end, he says, make no tarrying, O Lord, my deliverer, thou art my help, make haste unto me, O God. I'm reading that backwards, if you notice. So what I'm showing you here is that he starts with, make haste, deliver me, make haste, and he ends with, make haste, you're my deliverer, make no tarrying. What does tarrying mean? That's not a word we use in 2020. That's a bit of an archaic word. You know, if I told my wife, hey, we got to leave in five minutes, make no tarrying, you'd never say that. But what would you be saying if you said that? Hurry up, right? So tarrying, this is what tarrying is, delay. That's what it means to delay. Have you ever heard, like, really old time preachers, like in their 80s, would sometimes say, you know, if the Lord tarries, thus and thus will happen. Who's heard that expression before? This is what they're saying, if the Lord delays his coming, or if the Lord comes later. That's what they mean by that. So make no tarrying is just an older way of saying, hurry up, make haste, come quickly. David is in a serious bind, and he needs help right now. And he's praying to God. He's saying, Lord, please help me. I want you to be magnified. I want your great name to go forth. I want you to step in and wipe out my enemies, Lord, confuse them, confound them, turn them backwards, Lord. And what did David say elsewhere? I'm for peace, but when I speak, they're for war. David wanted peace. And so this is a great prayer, prayed by a great man of God. And we could take an example from this and not say, oh, never mind, Matthew 5. Oh, forget it. Put a line through it. That's the wrong way to interpret the Bible, my friend. Every psalm is relevant today in 2020, all 150 of them. And we should sing them, pray them, read them, love them, get comfort from them. And Jesus, when he talked about that, he said, think not. Folks, you got to read the beginning of the chapter. It's the same chapter, right? Matthew 5, 17. Think not that I've come to destroy the law of the prophets. I came not to destroy, but to fulfill. And then people go down 30 verses, and here's what they say. Oh, Jesus destroyed this prophet. Oh, Jesus nullifying what David the prophet said. And by the way, David is called David the prophet. So he didn't come to destroy the law of the prophets. He came to fulfill. And so he gives examples where he fulfills. He augments. He expounds, but he does not negate or nullify the teachings. So don't jump to that bizarre conclusion. Psalm 70 ought to be a blessing to us in 2020 as we read it, meditate on it, and let it become a part of who we are. Let's bow our heads and have a word of prayer. Father, we thank you so much for this great psalm, Lord. And I just pray that you would give us wisdom as we go through our lives to understand the difference, Lord, between someone who has done us wrong and someone who is truly evil, and sick, and depraved, and a reprobate, Lord. Help us to be able to discern between those things, Lord, so that we can rightly divide the word of truth and use these things properly. And in Jesus' name, we pray. Amen. Amen, please turn to hymn number 195. I will sing of the mercies of the Lord forever, number 195. Sing it out nice and loud, number 195. I will sing of the mercies of the Lord forever, I will sing. I will sing. I will sing of the mercies of the Lord forever, I will sing. I will sing of the mercies of the Lord. With my mouth will I be known, my faithfulness, my faithfulness. With my mouth will I be known, my faithfulness to all generations. I will sing of the mercies of the Lord forever, I will sing. I will sing. I will sing of the mercies of the Lord forever, I will sing of the mercies of the Lord. I will sing of the mercies of the Lord forever, I will sing. I will sing. I will sing of the mercies of the Lord forever, I will sing of the mercies of the Lord. With my mouth will I be known, my faithfulness, my faithfulness. With my mouth will I be known, my faithfulness to all generations. I will sing of the mercies of the Lord forever, I will sing. I will sing. I will sing of the mercies of the Lord forever, I will sing of the mercies of the Lord.