Psalm 9
August 22, 2021
preached by Pastor Ryan Bouton
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Time of Reflection Quotations

“The moral test of government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; and those who are in shadows of life, the sick, the needy, and the handicapped.”

~Hubert H. Humphrey

“When the ruler departs from law there is no security and everything is uncertain. No reliance can be placed on the will, not to speak of the lust, of another.”

~Thomas Aquinas

“Should not shepherds feed the sheep? You eat the fat, you clothe yourselves with the wool, you slaughter the fat ones, but you do not feed the sheep. The weak you have not strengthened, the sick you have not healed, the injured you have not bound up, the strayed you have not brought back, the lost you have not sought, and with force and harshness you have ruled them. So they were scattered, because there was no shepherd, and they became food for all the wild beasts. My sheep were scattered; they wandered over all the mountains and on every high hill. My sheep were scattered over all the face of the earth, with none to search or seek for them.”

~Ezekiel 34:2-6

“What are kingdoms without justice? They’re just gangs of bandits.”

~Augustine of Hippo, City of God

“I can imagine no man who will look with more horror on the End than a conscientious revolutionary who has, in a sense sincerely, been justifying cruelties and injustices inflicted on millions of his contemporaries by the benefits which he hopes to confer on future generations: generations who, as one terrible moment now reveals to him, were never going to exist. Then he will see the massacres, the faked trials, the deportations, to be all ineffaceably real, an essential part, his part, in the drama that has just ended: while the future Utopia had never been anything but a fantasy.”

~C.S. Lewis, “The World’s Last Night”

Sermon Passage

Psalm 9 (ESV)

¹  I will give thanks to the Lord with my whole heart;
I will recount all of your wonderful deeds.
²  I will be glad and exult in you;
I will sing praise to your name, O Most High.

³  When my enemies turn back,
they stumble and perish before your presence.
⁴  For you have maintained my just cause;
you have sat on the throne, giving righteous judgment.

⁵  You have rebuked the nations; you have made the wicked perish;
you have blotted out their name forever and ever.
⁶  The enemy came to an end in everlasting ruins;
their cities you rooted out;
the very memory of them has perished.

⁷  But the Lord sits enthroned forever;
he has established his throne for justice,
⁸  and he judges the world with righteousness;
he judges the peoples with uprightness.

⁹  The Lord is a stronghold for the oppressed,
a stronghold in times of trouble.
¹⁰ And those who know your name put their trust in you,
for you, O Lord, have not forsaken those who seek you.

¹¹ Sing praises to the Lord, who sits enthroned in Zion!
Tell among the peoples his deeds!
¹² For he who avenges blood is mindful of them;
he does not forget the cry of the afflicted.

¹³ Be gracious to me, O Lord!
See my affliction from those who hate me,
O you who lift me up from the gates of death,
¹⁴ that I may recount all your praises,
that in the gates of the daughter of Zion
I may rejoice in your salvation.

¹⁵ The nations have sunk in the pit that they made;
in the net that they hid, their own foot has been caught.
¹⁶ The Lord has made himself known; he has executed judgment;
the wicked are snared in the work of their own hands. Higgaion. Selah

¹⁷ The wicked shall return to Sheol,
all the nations that forget God.

¹⁸ For the needy shall not always be forgotten,
and the hope of the poor shall not perish forever.

¹⁹ Arise, O Lord! Let not man prevail;
let the nations be judged before you!
²⁰ Put them in fear, O Lord!
Let the nations know that they are but men! Selah