The Sinking Sand of Human Saviors Text: Psalm 146:3-4
Introduction: The Political Temptation
We live in a profoundly political age. By this I mean that modern man, having abandoned God, has not become less religious. He has simply transferred his religious impulse to the state. Politics has become his salvation, the ballot box his sacrament, and the elected official his priest or, in some cases, his messiah. Every four years, the nation is gripped by a messianic fervor, looking for a man on a white horse, or perhaps a man in a very expensive suit, to ride into Washington D.C. and solve all our problems. We are told to hope, to believe in change, and to put our trust in the grand plans and glorious five-point proposals of this or that candidate.
And when our man wins, we are jubilant for a season. And when he loses, we are plunged into a deep despair, as though the heavens themselves had fallen. This entire emotional rollercoaster is a form of idolatry. It is the worship of man. It is a violation of the first and second commandments, and it is a direct contradiction of the clear teaching of Scripture. The Bible, and our text today in particular, is a bucket of cold water thrown on the feverish face of political messianism.
The psalmist here is not giving us quaint, spiritual advice for our private devotional lives. He is giving us hard-headed, practical, worldly wisdom. He is telling us where not to invest our ultimate hope. He is warning us against building our house on the sinking sand of human power. This psalm is one of the great Hallelujah psalms, beginning and ending with "Praise the Lord." And the central reason for this praise is the radical difference between the God who made the world and the men who think they can run it without Him. The psalmist is setting up a stark antithesis, a great divide, between two objects of trust: the Creator and the creature. To trust in one is wisdom and life. To trust in the other is folly and death.
We must understand that this is not a call to political apathy. Christians are to be the most engaged and responsible citizens of all. But our engagement must be governed by a profound realism, a realism grounded in the truth of God's Word. We are to work, pray, and vote, but we are not to trust. Our ultimate confidence must be placed elsewhere.
The Text
Do not trust in nobles,
In merely a son of man, in whom there is no salvation.
His spirit departs, he returns to the earth;
In that very day his plans perish.
(Psalm 146:3-4)
The Vain Object of Trust (v. 3)
The psalmist begins with a direct, negative command:
"Do not trust in nobles, In merely a son of man, in whom there is no salvation." (Psalm 146:3)
The word for "nobles" here is often translated as "princes." This refers to the ruling class, the influential, the powerful, the people who make the big decisions. In our day, this would include presidents, senators, Supreme Court justices, CEOs, media moguls, and cultural tastemakers. These are the people the world looks to for deliverance. They are the ones who promise security, prosperity, and justice. And the Bible's command is blunt: "Do not trust in them."
This is not because all politicians are uniquely corrupt, though many are. It is because they are something far more damning in this context: they are merely men. The psalmist immediately clarifies who these nobles are: "merely a son of man." This phrase, "son of man," is used throughout the Old Testament to emphasize human frailty and mortality. It highlights the vast chasm between God and humanity. To be a "son of man" is to be a creature, to be dust, to be a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes.
And because he is merely a man, the psalmist says, "in whom there is no salvation." The word for salvation here is broad. It means help, deliverance, victory, safety. The political prince may promise you a tax cut. He may promise you border security. He may promise to appoint good judges. And he may even deliver on some of those things for a time. But he cannot offer you ultimate salvation. He cannot save you from sin. He cannot save you from death. He cannot save your children from the spirit of the age. He cannot save a nation from its own moral rot. To look to a politician for this kind of deliverance is like looking to a leaky bucket to save you from a flood. It is the wrong tool for the job.
This is the fundamental error of all secular humanism. Humanism believes that man is the measure of all things and that salvation is something we achieve for ourselves, through education, or technology, or, most especially, through politics. The humanist says, "No deity will save us; we must save ourselves." The Bible says this is a fool's errand. It is like a man trying to pull himself out of a swamp by his own bootstraps. You need a hand from outside the swamp. You need a savior who is not "merely a son of man." You need the Son of Man, Jesus Christ, who is also the Son of God.
The Built-In Obsolescence of Man (v. 4)
The psalmist then gives us the reason why trusting in man is such a bad investment. It's not just that they are morally flawed; it's that they are metaphysically fragile. They have a built-in expiration date.
"His spirit departs, he returns to the earth; In that very day his plans perish." (Psalm 146:4)
Here we have the great equalizer: death. No matter how powerful a man is, no matter how grand his titles or how vast his armies, he is still subject to the curse of Genesis 3: "for you are dust, and to dust you shall return." The word for "spirit" here is ruach, which can mean breath or wind. His breath, the very thing that animates his body, departs. It is not his to keep. He is a tenant, not an owner. And when the lease is up, he is evicted. He "returns to the earth." The man who sought to rule the world cannot even rule his own body against a microbe or a clot of blood.
And what happens to all his grand designs? What about his "New Deal," his "Great Society," his plan to "Build Back Better"? The psalmist is ruthless in his assessment: "In that very day his plans perish." All the schemes, the ambitions, the political calculations, the intricate policies, the hopes for a lasting legacy, they all evaporate. They die with him. Think of the great empires of history. Think of the Pharaohs, the Caesars, the Napoleons. Where are their plans now? They are footnotes in a history book. Their grand projects are ruins for tourists to wander through. Their breath departed, and their plans perished.
This is why political trust is so foolish. You are entrusting your ultimate hope to a dying man whose plans have no shelf life beyond his own funeral. You are tying your anchor to a ship that is already taking on water and is destined for the bottom of the sea. The plans of man are like a chalk drawing on the sidewalk. A single rain shower, the rain shower of death, washes them all away. But the Word of the Lord, and the plans of the Lord, endure forever.
The Blessed Alternative
The psalmist does not leave us in this state of political atheism, with nowhere to turn. He has torn down the false object of trust in order to build up the true one. The very next verse provides the glorious alternative: "Blessed is he whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the LORD his God" (Psalm 146:5).
Notice the contrast. The prince is a "son of man," in whom there is no salvation. But the blessed man's help is in the "God of Jacob," the covenant-keeping God who wrestled with a man and blessed him. The prince returns to the earth and his plans perish. But the blessed man's hope is in "the LORD his God, who made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, who keeps faith forever" (Psalm 146:6).
Our God is not mortal. He does not have a "spirit that departs." He is the one who gives spirit and breath to all things. His plans do not perish. His counsel stands forever, the plans of His heart to all generations (Psalm 33:11). While the plans of man are subject to death, God's plan incorporates death itself and defeats it. The greatest plan of man was to put the Son of God on a cross. And in that very act, they were unwittingly fulfilling the eternal plan of God to save the world.
This changes everything about our political engagement. We do not despair when our candidates lose, because our hope is not in them. We do not become arrogant when our candidates win, because our trust is not in them. We work for political righteousness, we advocate for just laws, we seek the good of our city, but we do so with a calm and steady confidence that the ultimate outcome of history does not rest on the shoulders of any man in a capital building. It rests on the shoulders of the one of whom Isaiah said, "the government shall be upon His shoulder" (Isaiah 9:6).
Conclusion: The Only Prince Worthy of Trust
This passage forces us to ask a very pointed question: Where is your trust? Not your vote. Not your political preference. Where is your deep, foundational, heart-level trust?
If it is in any noble, any party, any movement, or any "son of man," then your hope is built on a foundation of dust. You are trusting in a savior who cannot save himself, let alone you. You are trusting in plans that will perish. This is the great temptation of our time, to believe that if we just get the right people in power, we can build a kingdom without the King.
But the Bible points us to a different kind of Prince. It points us to the one who is both the Son of Man and the Son of God. Jesus Christ is the only "son of man" in whom there is salvation. He is the only Prince whose plans did not perish in the grave. In fact, His plan was to go into the grave and smash it to pieces from the inside out. His spirit departed, He returned to the earth for three days, but He did not stay there. He rose again, demonstrating that He has power over death itself.
Therefore, He is the only one worthy of our ultimate trust. He is the King of kings and Lord of lords. He is the one who is currently ruling and reigning, putting all of His enemies under His feet. Our political activity, then, should be an expression of our trust in Him. We work and vote and speak not to build a fragile kingdom of man, but to bear witness to the unshakable Kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ. We do not trust in the princes of this world, because we have sworn allegiance to the Prince of Peace, whose kingdom shall have no end.