"If the Foundations Are Destroyed, What Can (even) the Righteous Do?"

"If the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?" (Psalm 11:3)

 

"For no other foundation can anyone lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ."  This is not just some "Foundation Series" of a local church or of the Christian Faith.  This is the Foundation of life in the Universe.  And our text asks a most sobering question, "If the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?"  The thought occurred to me today, "What can (even) the righteous do?"    

 

The Hebrew word for, "foundations," in our text refers to "a support system" of individuals and nations, which includes moral and political systems.  Take this away, and "what can the righteous do?"  Examples:  Babylonian, Media-Persian, Grecian, Roman, Ottoman Empires, Germany in the 1920s and 30s, and post war Eastern Europe, China, Mexico, Africa.  "What can the righteous do?"  Now, "the righteous," continue in the attempt to, "do," something.  Yet, "If the foundations are destroyed," those foundations to which the Bible refers as, "the age-old foundations," go ahead, build bigger church buildings, bigger ministries, but really, "What can the righteous do?" 

 

The American church has by in large de-emphasized, "foundations," not so much those of the Christian Faith, but the foundations of the society in which it finds itself.  The Church in America sits in the midst of a nation which outlawed the Prayer of Jesus and the Bible in its state school system, legalized the murder of the unborn, rejected the Word of God on homosexuality, marriage, and increasingly infringing on the Biblical rights of the entrepreneur, just to name a few.  Yet what have, "the righteous," been able to do?  There is no victory or even peace for an individual or nation whose, "foundations are destroyed."  Worship won't change it; prayer won't change it; preaching won't change it; all of the nervous religious activity in the universe won't change it.  Obedience will change it. 

 

Father, in Jesus' Name, do this in me, in Your Church-- "And those from among you will rebuild the ancient ruins; You will raise up the age-old foundations; And you will be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of the streets in which to dwell."  Amen.

 

When Peter, an 18 year old Norwegian, "heard the call to evangelize China, he not only emptied his wallet into the collection plate, but included a small note with the words, 'and my life.'"

"Looking Unto Jesus"
Hebrews 12:2