Times of Trouble (22/08/2010)

Heavenly Father, through your living Word, prepare us to live our lives by faith in you, whatever comes our way. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

We’re working our way through the Psalms – the song book of the Bible – and this evening we reach Psalm 10. If there’s a Bible near you please turn that up and have it open in front of you. You’ll find it on p 547. Then you’ll see from the outline on the back of the service sheet that my title is ‘Times of Trouble’.

That’s apt, because this is a Psalm for a spiritual antelope. Why do I say that? It’s because this Psalm reminds me of a wildlife programme I saw on TV recently. It was filmed on the plains of East Africa, and it tracked a predatory lion going about its business of finding its next meal. The lion prowled around on the edges of a great herd of antelope. When it saw an opportunity, it chased down a small, weak antelope on the fringes of the herd. The lion took the antelope by the throat, dragged it away, killed it and ate it. The situation that gives rise to Psalm 10 is that a wicked man is hunting down the helpless to destroy them for his own benefit.

So this is a Psalm for those who find themselves under attack from a wicked man – whatever the particular nature of that attack might be, whether it’s physical or spiritual or both. It’s also a Psalm to prepare us for such times, if we’re not now under attack. What is more, it teaches us how to support those under attack among us and around the world. Any which way, every one of us needs this Psalm in our armoury if we’re going to survive and help our brothers and sisters in Christ to survive.

Now when we take a close look at it, there are five things that we see. Each of them is reflected in one of the headings that you’ll find on the outline on the back of the service sheet. So first, there are honest questions for God. Secondly, there are close-up perspectives on a wicked man. Thirdly, there are heartfelt cries to God. Fourthly, you can see a faith-filled vision of God. And fifthly, we get a life-changing glimpse of God’s purpose. Let’s get our noses into the Psalm and see where those things are to found.

First, HONEST QUESTIONS FOR GOD.

You can see these questions in verses 1 and 13. The Psalm begins with them, in this way:

¹Why, O LORD, do you stand far off? Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?

These, then, are questions about God. They are the kind of questions that very easily press in on our minds when we find ourselves in times of deep trouble as believers. God seems miles away. It seems like he’s deliberately hiding himself. So those questions really translate as: “God, just when I need you, why can’t I see you? Why can’t you see the trouble I’m in here? Why don’t you hear us?” It seems God is so far away and so well hidden that we can’t see him, and he can neither see nor hear us.

If that seems familiar to you from your own times of trouble, then simply note this. Here are these questions in the song book of the Bible. This is like God’s permission for us to ask them. It’s alright for us to ask God our hard, honest questions. If we’re directing them at God, then our angry, honest questions flow from faith.

In verse 1 the questions are about God. Down in verse 13 the questions are about the wicked man who’s attacking:

¹³Why does the wicked man revile God? Why does he say to himself, He won't call me to account?

In other words, why does he hate you? Why can’t he see you? Why is there evil at all? It doesn’t make sense. We look for reasons. When we can’t find them, it distresses us even further.

Andrew White is the Vicar of the only Anglican church in Baghdad. In a piece he wrote about the church he leads he said that the vast majority of their growing congregation of 1500 was women. Why? Was it because Christianity is regarded as women’s work? No. It was because almost all of the men had been killed.

Around the world Christians are literally being killed for their faith. And Christians come under attack in all kinds of other ways. Such attacks raise hard questions in our minds, both about God and about evil. What should we do with such questions? We should pour them out to God. This Psalm gives us that encouragement. God wants to hear our honest questions.

Secondly, CLOSE-UP PERSPECTIVES ON A WICKED MAN

This is the longest section of the Psalm, and it runs all the way through verses 2-11. So the bulk of the Psalm is taken up with this close-up examination of the ways of the wicked man. It’s as if the writer King David is saying: “Lord, I can’t see you, but I certainly have no difficulty seeing the wicked man. He’s all over the place. He’s in my face. He’s hot on my heels and about to over-run me. His breath is on my neck and I’m staring into his evil eyes. I see him all too clearly. And I don’t like what I see one bit.”

The image of the predatory lion is explicit here in verse 9:

He lies in wait like a lion in cover…

From a New Testament perspective that’s a reminder that when we’re dealing with a wicked man, then behind that man there’s Satan even if the wicked man has no idea of that himself. So the apostle Peter warns (this is 1 Peter 5.8):

Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.

The wicked do Satan’s work. What, then, does a wicked man look like close-up according to the Psalm? It describes his thoughts, his words and his deeds – what he thinks, what he says and what he does.

What does the wicked man think? Verses 3-6:

³He boasts of the cravings of his heart; he blesses the greedy and reviles the LORD.
⁴In his pride the wicked does not seek him; in all his thoughts there is no room for God…
⁵… he sneers at all his enemies.
⁶He says to himself, Nothing will shake me; I'll always be happy and never have trouble…

And verse 11:

¹¹He says to himself, God has forgotten; he covers his face and never sees.

His only thoughts about God are full of hate. He thinks God doesn’t see him; that his evil is to his credit; that he’s strong and invulnerable. He’s contemptuous of the Godly.

What does he say? Verse 7:

⁷His mouth is full of curses and lies and threats; trouble and evil are under his tongue.

Again, who does that remind you of? In John 8.44 Jesus says about Satan:

“He was a murderer from the beginning… When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies.”

The wicked man curses – he wants to do harm. He lies – he tramples on the truth. He threatens – he wants to prevent good being done.

That’s what he thinks and what he says. What does he do? Verse 2:

²In his arrogance the wicked man hunts down the weak

Verses 8-10:

⁸He lies in wait near the villages; from ambush he murders the innocent, watching in secret for his victims.
⁹He lies in wait like a lion in cover; he lies in wait to catch the helpless; he catches the helpless and drags them off in his net.
¹⁰His victims are crushed, they collapse; they fall under his strength.

Notice that it’s the weak he goes after, not the strong. That rather undermines his arrogant boasting. He hasn’t got the guts to pick on someone his own size. He hunts the weak – he waits for them, catches them, drags them off and kills them. And, shockingly, he prospers. No wonder his vicious work throws up those hard questions.

The wicked man can dress himself up in sheep’s clothing. Or a policeman’s uniform come to that. Like the recent case that the Christian Institute helped fight of the street preacher who was prevented from preaching and arrested by the police on no legitimate grounds. This is the UK we’re talking about, not Iraq. That preacher wasn’t crushed and didn’t collapse under the pressure thank God. Perhaps he knows this Psalm well.

Where have we got to? The first thing we see here is honest questions for God. Secondly, there are close-up perspectives on a wicked man – what he thinks, says and does. Then:

Thirdly, HEARTFELT CRIES TO GOD

You can see those in verses 12:

¹²Arise, LORD! Lift up your hand, O God. Do not forget the helpless.

And then again in verse 15:

¹⁵Break the arm of the wicked and evil man; call him to account for his wickedness that would not be found out.

King David wants God to raise his arm on behalf of the helpless, and to break the arm of the evil man. The arm, of course, represents power and strength. In other words, this is a cry to the Lord not to stand aside but to use his power to destroy the power of the wicked man.

Faced with evil, of course that’s what we want, and we shouldn’t be shy of asking God to act like that. Think of Hitler, his power broken, shut up in his bunker; or Saddam, his power lost for ever, cowering in his hole in the ground. What the world needs is for the power of evil to be broken, and only God can do that. We depend utterly on him. He wants us to express that by crying out to him to put his power to use. This Psalm models for us those heartfelt cries to God.

Then what do see next?

Fourthly, A FAITH-FILLED VISION OF GOD

For all his anguished questions and desperate cries as he stares evil in the face, King David has not lost his grip on God. This is a Psalm of faith, not of despair. If he sees the wicked man as like a predatory lion, he knows that the Lord his God is the all-powerful Lion of Judah. Take a look now at verse 14:

¹⁴But you, O God, do see trouble and grief; you consider it to take it in hand. The victim commits himself to you; you are the helper of the fatherless.

And then also down to verses 16-18:

¹⁶The LORD is King for ever and ever; the nations will perish from his land.
¹⁷You hear, O LORD, the desire of the afflicted; you encourage them, and you listen to their cry,
¹⁸defending the fatherless and the oppressed…

God is King. The wicked man may seem to be succeeding all around us. We may even find it impossible to see God at work. But, though we don’t see him, he is here. He is the ruling power.

Do you see how those hard questions for God are answered here? We can’t see you, Lord. You can’t see us in our trouble. You’re not hearing us crying out to you. You’re a long way off. You’re hiding yourself. That’s what it feels like. But that’s not the reality. That’s not what’s actually going on. In truth, God is near. God does see. God does hear. God does act. He sees our troubles. He hears our cries. He acts in defence of the weak.

That’s faith. That’s the vision of the Lion of Judah that we need. A young Christian man I heard about went through a time of great trouble. One of the things that he found helped him to get through it was to paint murals on the walls of his room. One of those murals was a massive head of Aslan – the lion king of C. S. Lewis’s Narnia stories, who stands for Christ, the Lion of Judah. I saw that mural. It dominates the room, watching over its inhabitant. It’s a painted statement of faith in the midst of serious trouble. We all need our own equivalent of that mural in our minds, dominating our thoughts. That’s what King David has:

But you, O God, do see trouble and grief; you consider it to take it in hand… The Lord is King.

That’s the faith-filled vision of God that this Psalm seeks to strengthen within each one of us.

And there’s one more very important thing here to which I’d like to draw your attention.

Fifthly, A LIFE-CHANGING GLIMPSE OF GOD’S PURPOSE

Why does our loving and powerful God deal with his people in this way, putting us in situations where it feels as if he’s a long way off, hiding, not hearing us, taking no notice of us, while evil men prosper around us, doing all they can to destroy faith and smash the church? Why does he do that? Well we get a glimpse of his purpose in the last part of the last verse of Psalm 10. Take a look at the end of the Psalm. God acts as he does:

… in order that man, who is of the earth, may terrify no more.

No doubt this is not the whole of the Lord’s purpose, but it’s a key part of it. God’s purpose is that we’ll learn not to be afraid of the wicked man, because instead we’ve learned to trust God in our troubles. We need to learn this because evil is strong and scary, and the human agents of evil very often seem strong and scary, and when we’re eyeball to eyeball with evil, we very easily get scared. But when we see Satan try to do his worst, and then we see God step in and ‘break his arm’ as the Psalm puts it, then we learn that we don’t need to be afraid of the wicked man. We can trust God.

There are some things God says again and again to his people. One of them is this: “Do not be afraid.” It runs right through the Bible’s account of God’s relationship with his people, and it is repeatedly on the lips of Jesus. Do not be afraid. There’s a marvellous example of that in John 14-17, where Jesus is teaching his disciples just before he goes to the cross. Here’s what he says in the course of that:

“Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid… If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first… I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” [John 14.27; 15.18; 16.33]

God’s purpose is that we’ll learn not to be afraid of anyone, however wicked – not because we’re strong, but because God is strong and we trust him in our troubles.

I was talking the other day to a church leader who’s under pressure to back off from his plans for mission and growth. Men who are, humanly speaking, more powerful than he is don’t like what he’s doing and would like to prevent him. But he is undeterred. Why? Because God’s purpose is being fulfilled in his life and he’s learning not to be afraid. This Psalm gives us just that life-changing glimpse of God’s purpose that we all need.

So there’s Psalm 10. Let’s learn from it. Let’s be spurred on in our support of our brothers and sisters around the world who face much worse troubles than we do. And if and when we come under attack, here’s what to remember. Don’t hesitate to ask those hard questions – but don’t stop there. Don’t be naïve about what your enemy is like – know your enemy. Don’t hold back from asking God to act – pray boldly for what you want. Don’t believe that God has forgotten or doesn’t see – after all, that’s what the wicked man thinks! Instead, by faith, fix your eyes on Jesus the Lion of Judah. And commit yourself to God’s purpose – trust him and fear no man.

Let’s pray:

Heavenly Father, we thank you for this marvellous Psalm and for the powerful help it is in equipping us to be faithful disciples of Christ in a hostile world. Lord, please drive its lessons deep into our souls, so that whoever or whatever you call us to face, we will trust you, and not be afraid. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Times of Trouble	22/08/2010 at 6.30pm
Psalm 10	Jesmond Parish Church

A sermon preached by Jonathan Pryke
Heavenly Father, through your living Word, prepare us to live our lives by faith in you, whatever comes our way. In Jesus’ name. Amen. We’re working our way through the Psalms – the song book of the Bible – and this evening we reach Psalm 10. If there’s a Bible near you please turn that up and have it open in front of you. You’ll find it on p 547. Then you’ll see from the outline on the back of the service sheet that my title is ‘Times of Trouble’. That’s apt, because this is a Psalm for a spiritual antelope. Why do I say that? It’s because this Psalm reminds me of a wildlife programme I saw on TV recently. It was filmed on the plains of East Africa, and it tracked a predatory lion going about its business of finding its next meal. The lion prowled around on the edges of a great herd of antelope. When it saw an opportunity, it chased down a small, weak antelope on the fringes of the herd. The lion took the antelope by the throat, dragged it away, killed it and ate it. The situation that gives rise to Psalm 10 is that a wicked man is hunting down the helpless to destroy them for his own benefit. So this is a Psalm for those who find themselves under attack from a wicked man – whatever the particular nature of that attack might be, whether it’s physical or spiritual or both. It’s also a Psalm to prepare us for such times, if we’re not now under attack. What is more, it teaches us how to support those under attack among us and around the world. Any which way, every one of us needs this Psalm in our armoury if we’re going to survive and help our brothers and sisters in Christ to survive. Now when we take a close look at it, there are five things that we see. Each of them is reflected in one of the headings that you’ll find on the outline on the back of the service sheet. So first, there are honest questions for God. Secondly, there are close-up perspectives on a wicked man. Thirdly, there are heartfelt cries to God. Fourthly, you can see a faith-filled vision of God. And fifthly, we get a life-changing glimpse of God’s purpose. Let’s get our noses into the Psalm and see where those things are to found. First, HONEST QUESTIONS FOR GOD. You can see these questions in verses 1 and 13. The Psalm begins with them, in this way: ¹Why, O LORD, do you stand far off? Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble? These, then, are questions about God. They are the kind of questions that very easily press in on our minds when we find ourselves in times of deep trouble as believers. God seems miles away. It seems like he’s deliberately hiding himself. So those questions really translate as: “God, just when I need you, why can’t I see you? Why can’t you see the trouble I’m in here? Why don’t you hear us?” It seems God is so far away and so well hidden that we can’t see him, and he can neither see nor hear us. If that seems familiar to you from your own times of trouble, then simply note this. Here are these questions in the song book of the Bible. This is like God’s permission for us to ask them. It’s alright for us to ask God our hard, honest questions. If we’re directing them at God, then our angry, honest questions flow from faith. In verse 1 the questions are about God. Down in verse 13 the questions are about the wicked man who’s attacking: ¹³Why does the wicked man revile God? Why does he say to himself, He won't call me to account? In other words, why does he hate you? Why can’t he see you? Why is there evil at all? It doesn’t make sense. We look for reasons. When we can’t find them, it distresses us even further. Andrew White is the Vicar of the only Anglican church in Baghdad. In a piece he wrote about the church he leads he said that the vast majority of their growing congregation of 1500 was women. Why? Was it because Christianity is regarded as women’s work? No. It was because almost all of the men had been killed. Around the world Christians are literally being killed for their faith. And Christians come under attack in all kinds of other ways. Such attacks raise hard questions in our minds, both about God and about evil. What should we do with such questions? We should pour them out to God. This Psalm gives us that encouragement. God wants to hear our honest questions. Secondly, CLOSE-UP PERSPECTIVES ON A WICKED MAN This is the longest section of the Psalm, and it runs all the way through verses 2-11. So the bulk of the Psalm is taken up with this close-up examination of the ways of the wicked man. It’s as if the writer King David is saying: “Lord, I can’t see you, but I certainly have no difficulty seeing the wicked man. He’s all over the place. He’s in my face. He’s hot on my heels and about to over-run me. His breath is on my neck and I’m staring into his evil eyes. I see him all too clearly. And I don’t like what I see one bit.” The image of the predatory lion is explicit here in verse 9: He lies in wait like a lion in cover… From a New Testament perspective that’s a reminder that when we’re dealing with a wicked man, then behind that man there’s Satan even if the wicked man has no idea of that himself. So the apostle Peter warns (this is 1 Peter 5.8): Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. The wicked do Satan’s work. What, then, does a wicked man look like close-up according to the Psalm? It describes his thoughts, his words and his deeds – what he thinks, what he says and what he does. What does the wicked man *think? Verses 3-6: ³He boasts of the cravings of his heart; he blesses the greedy and reviles the LORD. ⁴In his pride the wicked does not seek him; in all his thoughts there is no room for God… ⁵… he sneers at all his enemies. ⁶He says to himself, Nothing will shake me; I'll always be happy and never have trouble… And verse 11: ¹¹He says to himself, God has forgotten; he covers his face and never sees.* His only thoughts about God are full of hate. He thinks God doesn’t see him; that his evil is to his credit; that he’s strong and invulnerable. He’s contemptuous of the Godly. What does he *say? Verse 7: ⁷His mouth is full of curses and lies and threats; trouble and evil are under his tongue.* Again, who does that remind you of? In John 8.44 Jesus says about Satan: “He was a murderer from the beginning… When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies.” The wicked man curses – he wants to do harm. He lies – he tramples on the truth. He threatens – he wants to prevent good being done. That’s what he thinks and what he says. What does he do? Verse 2: ²In his arrogance the wicked man hunts down the weak Verses 8-10: ⁸He lies in wait near the villages; from ambush he murders the innocent, watching in secret for his victims. ⁹He lies in wait like a lion in cover; he lies in wait to catch the helpless; he catches the helpless and drags them off in his net. ¹⁰His victims are crushed, they collapse; they fall under his strength. Notice that it’s the weak he goes after, not the strong. That rather undermines his arrogant boasting. He hasn’t got the guts to pick on someone his own size. He hunts the weak – he waits for them, catches them, drags them off and kills them. And, shockingly, he prospers. No wonder his vicious work throws up those hard questions. The wicked man can dress himself up in sheep’s clothing. Or a policeman’s uniform come to that. Like the recent case that the Christian Institute helped fight of the street preacher who was prevented from preaching and arrested by the police on no legitimate grounds. This is the UK we’re talking about, not Iraq. That preacher wasn’t crushed and didn’t collapse under the pressure thank God. Perhaps he knows this Psalm well. Where have we got to? The first thing we see here is honest questions for God. Secondly, there are close-up perspectives on a wicked man – what he thinks, says and does. Then: Thirdly, HEARTFELT CRIES TO GOD You can see those in verses 12: ¹²Arise, LORD! Lift up your hand, O God. Do not forget the helpless. And then again in verse 15: ¹⁵Break the arm of the wicked and evil man; call him to account for his wickedness that would not be found out. King David wants God to raise his arm on behalf of the helpless, and to break the arm of the evil man. The arm, of course, represents power and strength. In other words, this is a cry to the Lord not to stand aside but to use his power to destroy the power of the wicked man. Faced with evil, of course that’s what we want, and we shouldn’t be shy of asking God to act like that. Think of Hitler, his power broken, shut up in his bunker; or Saddam, his power lost for ever, cowering in his hole in the ground. What the world needs is for the power of evil to be broken, and only God can do that. We depend utterly on him. He wants us to express that by crying out to him to put his power to use. This Psalm models for us those heartfelt cries to God. Then what do see next? Fourthly, A FAITH-FILLED VISION OF GOD For all his anguished questions and desperate cries as he stares evil in the face, King David has not lost his grip on God. This is a Psalm of faith, not of despair. If he sees the wicked man as like a predatory lion, he knows that the Lord his God is the all-powerful Lion of Judah. Take a look now at verse 14: ¹⁴But you, O God, do see trouble and grief; you consider it to take it in hand. The victim commits himself to you; you are the helper of the fatherless. And then also down to verses 16-18: ¹⁶The LORD is King for ever and ever; the nations will perish from his land. ¹⁷You hear, O LORD, the desire of the afflicted; you encourage them, and you listen to their cry, ¹⁸defending the fatherless and the oppressed… God is King. The wicked man may seem to be succeeding all around us. We may even find it impossible to see God at work. But, though we don’t see him, he is here. He is the ruling power. Do you see how those hard questions for God are answered here? We can’t see you, Lord. You can’t see us in our trouble. You’re not hearing us crying out to you. You’re a long way off. You’re hiding yourself. That’s what it feels like. But that’s not the reality. That’s not what’s actually going on. In truth, God is near. God does see. God does hear. God does act. He sees our troubles. He hears our cries. He acts in defence of the weak. That’s faith. That’s the vision of the Lion of Judah that we need. A young Christian man I heard about went through a time of great trouble. One of the things that he found helped him to get through it was to paint murals on the walls of his room. One of those murals was a massive head of Aslan – the lion king of C. S. Lewis’s Narnia stories, who stands for Christ, the Lion of Judah. I saw that mural. It dominates the room, watching over its inhabitant. It’s a painted statement of faith in the midst of serious trouble. We all need our own equivalent of that mural in our minds, dominating our thoughts. That’s what King David has: But you, O God, do see trouble and grief; you consider it to take it in hand… The Lord is King. That’s the faith-filled vision of God that this Psalm seeks to strengthen within each one of us. And there’s one more very important thing here to which I’d like to draw your attention. Fifthly, A LIFE-CHANGING GLIMPSE OF GOD’S PURPOSE Why does our loving and powerful God deal with his people in this way, putting us in situations where it feels as if he’s a long way off, hiding, not hearing us, taking no notice of us, while evil men prosper around us, doing all they can to destroy faith and smash the church? Why does he do that? Well we get a glimpse of his purpose in the last part of the last verse of Psalm 10. Take a look at the end of the Psalm. God acts as he does: … in order that man, who is of the earth, may terrify no more. No doubt this is not the whole of the Lord’s purpose, but it’s a key part of it. God’s purpose is that we’ll learn not to be afraid of the wicked man, because instead we’ve learned to trust God in our troubles. We need to learn this because evil is strong and scary, and the human agents of evil very often seem strong and scary, and when we’re eyeball to eyeball with evil, we very easily get scared. But when we see Satan try to do his worst, and then we see God step in and ‘break his arm’ as the Psalm puts it, then we learn that we don’t need to be afraid of the wicked man. We can trust God. There are some things God says again and again to his people. One of them is this: “Do not be afraid.” It runs right through the Bible’s account of God’s relationship with his people, and it is repeatedly on the lips of Jesus. Do not be afraid. There’s a marvellous example of that in John 14-17, where Jesus is teaching his disciples just before he goes to the cross. Here’s what he says in the course of that: “Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid… If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first… I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” [John 14.27; 15.18; 16.33] God’s purpose is that we’ll learn not to be afraid of anyone, however wicked – not because we’re strong, but because God is strong and we trust him in our troubles. I was talking the other day to a church leader who’s under pressure to back off from his plans for mission and growth. Men who are, humanly speaking, more powerful than he is don’t like what he’s doing and would like to prevent him. But he is undeterred. Why? Because God’s purpose is being fulfilled in his life and he’s learning not to be afraid. This Psalm gives us just that life-changing glimpse of God’s purpose that we all need. So there’s Psalm 10. Let’s learn from it. Let’s be spurred on in our support of our brothers and sisters around the world who face much worse troubles than we do. And if and when we come under attack, here’s what to remember. Don’t hesitate to ask those hard questions – but don’t stop there. Don’t be naïve about what your enemy is like – know your enemy. Don’t hold back from asking God to act – pray boldly for what you want. Don’t believe that God has forgotten or doesn’t see – after all, that’s what the wicked man thinks! Instead, by faith, fix your eyes on Jesus the Lion of Judah. And commit yourself to God’s purpose – trust him and fear no man. Let’s pray: Heavenly Father, we thank you for this marvellous Psalm and for the powerful help it is in equipping us to be faithful disciples of Christ in a hostile world. Lord, please drive its lessons deep into our souls, so that whoever or whatever you call us to face, we will trust you, and not be afraid. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
For more sermon transcripts visit http://www.church.org.uk

Times of Trouble

A sermon preached by Jonathan Pryke