I will say unto the LORD, Thou art my hope and stronghold; my God in Him will I trust. (Psalm 91:2)

C. S. Lewis labeled the modern attitude — even among all too many self-described Christians as "God in the Dock." The "Dock" is the "dock of justice" — that place in English courts where the accused stands in to be interrogated. In other words, modern minds put Christ on trial.

We go to Christ with questions. If He comes up with the answers that satisfy us — then He is our God — if not, we get ourselves a God that suits our fancy. Jesus is called by many names in Scripture. He is called the Mighty King, Prince of Peace, Counselor, the Son of Man, the Bridegroom, the Body, the Lord, and Head of the Church, the Messiah, the Christ, even the Son of God. It is said He is the Firstborn of the Dead — Scripture declares Him to be the agent of creation, through whom all things were made.

Open the Bible at almost any point and you will not have to read far to get to the subject of God's mercy, his providence and his righteousness. But above all else, on every page of Holy Scripture we are confronted with the sovereignty of God and the fact that He is in control..

David spoke of Christ in the Twenty-Third Psalm as the Shepherd, the same name He gave Himself. "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want." Repeating Jesus same words today, we would say, "The Lord is my Shepherd, therefore there is nothing I lack." It is He alone who "maketh me to lie down in green pastures, He restoreth my soul." The psalm also speaks of "thy rod and thy staff" — symbols of God's authority and power to chastise as well as lead us as being sources of comfort. Frankly, the Twenty-third Psalm is an admission that I have no control over my life but am wholly dependent on the providence and mercy of God.

To recite the Psalm is an admission that He leadeth me into all good things. He gives them to me freely. This is called grace because He has declared me to be not guilty, and He acquits me of sin and gives me peace. St. Paul wrote about Christ in Colossians, "He is the image of the invisible God. All things were, created for Him and by Him. He is before all things, and by Him all things consist. He is the head of the body, the church: who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead; that in all things He might have the preeminence. He is the head of all principality and power. He is our risen Lord, seated at the right hand of Majesty on high." All these words are from Paul.

Have we ever really considered what these words mean? This means you as a Christian are an absolute over-comer who will be victorious in life and death. It means that poverty, want, need, sickness and death will not defeat you. Paul writes in Philippians 4:15, "But my God shall supply all you need according to riches in glory by Christ Jesus." Your heavenly Father knows your needs. Jesus demonstrated that when He was on earth. He fed the multitudes; He gave the disciples a monster catch of fish after they labored all night in vain. He turned water into wine; He healed the sick; He offered to carry our burdens if we permit him. Do we trust Him enough to carry our load, our stressed-out heart and nervous system?

Each one of us can truly say, if we trust Him enough to let Him into our inner lives, "The Lord is my shepherd, I do not want. I do not want for healing, I do not want for strength, for courage: I do not want for power — He said, 'all power on heaven and earth hath been given to me. ' I do not want for ability. I do not want for money. The Lord is my Shepherd, I do not want." I can say all this as a Christian (and not just me — you can too) because we live by faith as a Christian. We walk by faith, not by what we see.

Isaiah, the master prophet, wrote, "As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts higher than your thoughts." The angel said to Mary, "With God all things are possible." As Christians, none of us can think in the natural, on the physical level — and think God's thoughts — that's what Isaiah is trying to get across to us. It was what Jesus was trying to teach Nicodemus. How many of us are poor — poor in health, poor in wisdom, poor in spirit because we don't look for our Lord's way?

Those men on that boat in Galilee fished all night and caught nothing. In the dawn of a new day, our Lord came to these same men — "Cast out into the deep," He said. "But we have worked all night and caught nothing," cried Peter, the expert fisher. Just the same, "Cast out into the deep." What happened? The catch was so great the fishing boat almost sank. How often do we take time to listen to Him and cast out into the deep? God sees things as they really are and not the way we believe things should be. God promised Abraham — who did not have a natural heir — that he would be the Father of many nations because in the future Abraham would be the Father of all of us. Abraham believed this would be true, and God blessed Abraham (Romans 4:17).

Scripture tells us that the thoughts of the Lord are higher and greater than our thoughts. Our psalm this morning, pondering this mystery states: "O Lord, how glorious are thy works, thy thoughts are very deep. An unwise man doth not consider this, and a fool doth not understand it." (Psalm 93: 5-6)

Thus we cannot put God or His laws on trial because we are too foolish to fully understand Him, we can only accept on faith. Only by faith and grace and the power of the Holy Spirit can we be allowed to see into the mind of God as revealed in Holy Scripture and in the life and work of Jesus Christ.

Furthermore, if we are going to think God's thoughts, we will see things as God sees them because we have all received the promise that Christ will come and live in us if we give our life and love to Him. Not only should we think like God ("No one cometh to the Father but by me," said Jesus), but we also are made in His image and likeness. Thus, we should be acting like God. He wants us to act like Jesus Christ — that's why Jesus came — to show us we are like Him. But guess what? As long as we act like natural man and are obsessed with immature, childish thoughts our actions will be negative. How many times have we heard, "Oh, we tried that before and it absolutely, positively did not work." All Christ asks is that we allow Him to be our guide and our Great Shepherd..

To do this we must have the faith to follow Christ and not those who seek to dethrone and overthrow Him.

The poor, crippled beggar at Bethesda, had to pick up his pallet and walk. If he hadn't tried, he would never have known he could. Carl Marx's ungodly attitude about labor ended in disaster as seen by the hopeless collapse of the disaster that was called The Soviet Union.

The whole idea behind socialism is rooted in the ill-conceived schemes of college instructors and theorists who had no knowledge of what labor was about — people who had almost never worked except in unions or academia. The workers' paradise is an attempt to create "heaven on earth" in the false assumption that man collectively can be nobler and more perfectible if human wisdom is substituted for God with a new humanist messiah always waiting in the wings to bring about utopia. But instead of lifting the burden of sin and guilt from man, such false messiahs always stir up covetousness, pride, and self-centeredness.

Christ wants to tell the sinner who spends all his time pitying himself that he can truly see he has been liberated from the terror of worry and fear — that Christ took man's sinful and indolent nature upon Himself. He wants the man who sins, the man who wants to manipulate and control everybody and every thing around him, to surrender to His Lordship — His way. God wants men to know inside that Christ has traded places with him and that the old man of sin died. St. Paul agrees, "If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature; old things are passed away; behold, all things are made new." Our warfare with God is no more. A treaty has been struck with God. The New Covenant has been signed with the Lord's blood.

In the blood of Christ, we are no longer declared guilty — now we can have peace. That is not man's peace — the absence of physical war — but the peace that passeth all understanding — the peace of God — peace of mind, body, soul, and spirit. Why do we have the Peace of God? We can have it made available simply because we decided to let Christ change us.

We decided to surrender instead of struggling every day to keep control of everything and everybody with whom we are associated. We offer to do this every Sunday in church. But do we mean it?

"Here we offer and present unto thee O Lord, ourselves, our souls and bodies." We have to ask ourselves if we really mean it. It's hard to take — not being in control.

To say "in God we trust" is fairly easy. Most people will profess that the Lord is their Shepherd until such time as Christian teaching or discipline interferes with their personal plans. That is the point at which we put "God in the Dock". But to live as though we truly believe God is in charge is more difficult. Living it is a matter of faith. In whom do you put your trust?

I will say unto the LORD, Thou art my hope and stronghold; my God in Him will I trust.