Great is the Lord and greatly to be praisedThis week, Lord permitting, elections will be held in the United States and in New Zealand. There are those who believe that elections such as these will change the destiny and history of the entire world. Things will be irrevocably different as a result.
In the city of our God, His holy mountain.
Beautiful in elevation, the joy of the whole earth,
Is Mount Zion in the far north,
The city of the great King.
Psalm 48: 1-2
Nothing could be more bereft of truth. It will be business as usual. As one of our own politicians has recently averred, normal transmission shall resume shortly. There may be some slight recalibrating of settings, or trimming of sails—but that is about all. Why do we say this? Because a nation is nothing more than an organised, institutional reflection of its dominant religion. As the collective heart thinks and believes, so it is. A culture cannot be anything other than what its people actually are.
The dominant religion of both the United States and New Zealand is secular humanism: “secular” in that few believe any longer in a god or being who governs, rules, or controls anything so as to make a difference of any kind; “humanism” in that as the gods have retreated in the hearts of men, the dominion of man as the ultimate being has been asserted. Thus, changes of government are little more than re-arranging deck chairs on the Titanic—and even then the rearrangements are relatively minor affairs. We are not even talking about putting chairs upon a different deck.
Meanwhile, our text tells us that God is building His city upon the earth. It is Mount Zion, elevated above all the nations, high, beautiful, and compelling. This City will indeed eventually make a difference. Only those already within the City can see it at present. It has at present little, or negligible institutional form, upon which the devotees of secular humanism can look—even if they were inclined so to do.
In that City, secular humanism is a bad dream. It is part of another life—a world where the ultimacy of man means death—death to truth, light, reason, understanding, love, compassion, service, and justice. It is a world of darkness, even as the City is a world of light.
Our Psalm gives us the ultimate ground for believing in the eventual triumph of Mount Zion in the whole earth: it will certainly come to pass because the Lord is great. His glory and greatness both demand and necessitate the defeat of all nations and cultures which espouse “man as the god”. It goes on to prophesy that the kings of the earth will assemble and suddenly they will see what they were unable to see before, although it was right before their faces: they will see Mount Zion. They will be amazed, terrified, and they will flee.
Panic will seize them; anguish as in a woman in labour. Just as the east wind whips across the Mediterranean, breaking up the ships of Tarshish, so the Lord will cause the kings and their nations to break up and sink beneath the waves. They will be dashed upon the rocks of myriads and myriads of people, more numerous than the grains of sand on the seashore, who have been born again to life by the Spirit, who have smashed the idols of secular humanism in their hearts, families, churches, schools, and institutions.
The days are coming, says our Psalm, when the kings of the earth will suddenly look behind them and will find that their secular humanism no longer is the dominant religion; the world has changed. The realisation will dawn upon them that it changed, while they were sleeping. Suddenly they will see the City. But it will be too late. In that day, elections will indeed bring radical change. The world will be made anew—but only because it has already been made new, from the inside out.
Then our descendants will sing with the Psalmist:
“As we have heard, so have we seen
In the city of the Lord of hosts, in the city of our God;
God will establish her forever.”
Our duty in these days is be filled with a deep sense of biblical realism. Our duty is to discern properly that elections in our day mean very little, and signify less. But there is a City being built which signifies a great deal, and which will eventually terrify the pagan governments of the earth. At its head is our Lord Jesus Christ, risen, ascended, installed, and reigning. His Gospel is going out to all the earth. Every day, thousands of people are being transformed from darkness to light, by His Spirit. Our duty is to tell of that City and its burgeoning power and of its presence in the earth to our children and our childrens' children, so that they will both work and look for its emergence.
Walk about Zion, and go around her;
Count her towers;
Consider her ramparts;
Go through her palaces;
That you may tell it to the next generation.
For such is God,
Our God forever and ever;
He will guide us until death.
Psalm 48: 13,14
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