Answering back

As Advent has started at St Andrew's we've been looking at a series of psalms which point not to Jesus' first coming (the first Christmas) but his second coming, at the end of history. Last Sunday we looked at Psalm 11, which is all about answering back - it's quite a funny psalm in some ways (or maybe that's just me!)
My boss, Johnny Juckes, who's a top-notch, very interesting speaker, was preaching, and this is the gist of what he said...
If you read the psalm the first three verses are what the world says to the church, to Christians. Essentially, the message is 'Stop bringing your Christianity out in public. It's fine for you to do it in private, but don't think about talking about Jesus to society. You're too weak, there are too many people who don't like you. Just go away.' And if that was the message to God's people three thousand or so years ago, it still is today (just think about how many Christian voices we hear in the media, or in schools, for instance).
Verses 4-6 are the church's answer back to the world, and notice these verses don't really talk about the church or the world - they talk about God. And the basic message is 'Wait and see'. God is the ruler, even if that's hard to see (v4), and he's watching what everyone does (v4). And look at what he hates in verse 5 - he hates those who love violence, and he will judge them (v5). So the Christian answer when the world tells us to get lost, that there's nothing we can do, is to point towards God. We say that God is the ruler, that he does see what's going on, and he will do something about it. And ultimately we can point to a day when, in verse 7, 'upright men' (those forgiven through faith in Jesus) will see God's face - on the day when he judges evil and punishes violence, and recreates a perfect world for his forgiven people to live in.
So, when the world tells us that God's dead, when the world tells us to keep our faith private and not talk about it because it's useless, we can and must answer back; God is on his throne. He's coming back. Wait and see.