God is
Notes
Transcript
Of the 10 psalms I’m preaching this summer, Psalm 46 is my favorite. It’s been one of my go-to psalms for a long while.
I write in my Bible with both pencil and special archival-quality pen. And every single verse in Psalm 46 is underlined.
I quote Psalm 46 at every funeral. Terry Heuser has heard half of this psalm a few hundred times.
Psalm 46 is as comforting and is powerful.
It speaks to us when we are weary and full of grief. This psalm has strong words to people who oppose the Lord. This psalm includes some important correction for the people of God today—it challenges some of those silly, false ideas we start to believe. And, boy howdy, are there times we need correction.
If we have eyes to see and ears to hear, we will see the salvation of God prominently in this psalm. This psalm reminds us who God is and what He is to us—security and stability and salvation.
The psalmists—the sons of Korah—want us to see:
God is our true and only source of security
1 God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. 2 Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, 3 though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging.
GOD IS OUR TRUE AND ONLY SOURCE OF SECURITY
GOD IS OUR TRUE AND ONLY SOURCE OF SECURITY
Do you hear that? Look at how the psalm starts. God is our refuge and strength. Where do we find security? With whom?
God. Period. Not God plus anything else. Not God and…
God. This is where we find some much needed correction.
This—that God is our security—seems to be something we believe in theory, maybe. We believe this on Sunday mornings. We believe this when things are going well in our lives.
But we sometimes behave otherwise.
Sometimes, I fear, I could be classified as a practical atheist. I believe in God absolutely. But based on my behavior at times, it might appear that I don’t really believe what I claim to believe.
For all practical purposes, it could seem that I don’t really believe in God. This is called practical atheism.
I can say all day long, “God is my refuge and strength,” and in the same breath bemoan the fact that I don’t have enough money in my retirement account.
I might preach that God is our true and only source of security, all the while seeking security from somewhere else, from someone else.
“Everything is great as long as I have my wife and my kids, my job and my family; as long as my friends remain my friends, as long as I have ____________, I’m okay. I’m safe, secure.”
Wrong. Theologically, that’s wrong. We are meant to see and believe and behave as if God alone is our security.
Notice the picture in verse 2—though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging.
That’s a pretty vivid picture. Imagine the earth opening up beneath you. Imagine the Alps and the Andes crumbling to pieces and dropping into the ocean.
What’s the point? Even if everything you know, everything you depend upon disappears… even if everything is erased from the landscape like chalk from a chalkboard—God remains.
He’s still present. He is still strong and steady. At the end of everything else, God will be.
Very simply: God is. And nothing can ever change that.
So when your health fails, when your job is ripped out from under you, when your friends abandon you, when your family cracks at the seams and breaks away…
When all you know, when all you are, when all you have is lost, God still is. And nothing, nothing, nothing will alter that.
God is our refuge…
In Him we find shelter and safety, true shelter and safety.
After more than 30 years, the memories of all the mock-tornado drills are still vivid. The alarm would sound and the teacher would take us out into the locker hall (which, if you think about it, if a tornado hits, that’s all just shrapnel).
We were made to go out in the hall and curl up into a ball with our hands over our heads. And just like that, we were magically tornado-proof.
Even as a kid, I knew this was ridiculous.
There are many people who, like Dwight Schrute, have the best-stocked survival shelters around (I’m related to some of these people). People believe—honestly believe—that their shelves of 8-year-old canned tomatoes and dried beef will give them the security they need.
5-gallon buckets of rice, MREs, and iodine tablets are where some people find refuge and sense of safety.
God is our refuge and strength. This psalm wants us to put our hope and trust in Him. In God alone. Not God and stockpiles. Not God and emergency readiness. Not God and alarm systems. God. Period.
And here’s some really good news (verse 1)—God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble.
I love that phrase—an ever-present help. That’s a phrase we can cling to. Our God is not absent. He’s not a part-time god. He doesn’t take a holiday. He’s never off-duty. Indeed, He never slumbers nor sleeps (Psalm 121:4).
God is ever-present. He can be found. He’s never far off.
And One who is ever-present is enough. He’s all we need. He’s sufficient. Even when we think we need this or that (that we need that person or that object), the One enthroned in Heaven, the well-proven Helper, reminds us that He is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in times of trouble.
With God as our security, especially when we really believe that He is our security, we will not be afraid.
Upon writing these truths, the psalmists say simply: we will not fear.
We will not fear, even if the earth falls out from underneath us and all the mountains collapse, we will not fear because God is our ever-present help and refuge and strength.
What we need to know is not how bad the assault will be but only how adequate our resources are.
There are, there will be times when God’s people feel their whole world is caving in.
Jesus has told us there will be many distresses that characterize the present age.
7 When you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. 8 Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be earthquakes in various places, and famines. These are the beginning of birth pains. 9 “You must be on your guard. You will be handed over to the local councils and flogged in the synagogues. On account of me you will stand before governors and kings as witnesses to them.
In short, our world is pretty much unglued. And it’s going to get worse.
But our psalm begins by focusing on God. He is an ever-present help, a well-proved help in trouble.
The word ‘trouble’ is actually plural here. In any and many troubles, God is our help.
We will not fear when God is our security.
The psalmists—the sons of Korah—want us to see:
God is, for His people, stability.
4 There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy place where the Most High dwells. 5 God is within her, she will not fall; God will help her at break of day. 6 Nations are in uproar, kingdoms fall; he lifts his voice, the earth melts. 7 The Lord Almighty is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress.
GOD IS, FOR HIS PEOPLE, STABILITY
GOD IS, FOR HIS PEOPLE, STABILITY
Verse 4 begins by saying, literally, “A river!”
We need to get the feel of the psalm here. After roaring and foaming and surging seas of verses 2-3, there is, all of a sudden, a peaceful river. There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God.
The psalmist wants you to hear and feel the difference between the world falling apart and a place of quiet and peace. “Peace like a river.”
Understand, there is no river that runs through Jerusalem; not now, not then.
Unlike other capitals of the day, Jerusalem was atop a mountain and without a river.
Babylon was built on the Euphrates. Egypt rests alongside the Nile. The great city of Rome is on the River Tiber.
There is good reason Papinville was the first county seat of Bates County—because of the river. A river means life and trade and commerce.
The sons of Korah are singing about the river whose streams make glad the city of God.
This must be speaking about something other than an actual river, some place other than the literal Jerusalem.
What refreshes this “city” is the presence of the Living God. Augustine, the theologian of old, looked beyond all earthy cities to “the city of God”—the Church, the people of God.
The Church, which is built by God, will survive when all other “cities” fall.
This “city”—the people of God, the Church—is glad and satisfied with and because of the presence of God. He dwells amongst His people. And she will not fall because of His presence.
This is an incredible promise—and it is just that, a promise. The people of God, the Church, make up a “city” that will stand, stable and strong, no matter what the world throws at her because she belongs to God.
Verse 5 puts is plainly: she will not fall.
This is all the more incredible when we remember (v. 2) the mountains could fall. And (v. 6), kingdoms fall, but not the “city of God.”
God grants His people stability—stability unmatched by anything the world knows. God is within this city, she will not fall;
God is, for His people, stability. The nations rage, man-made kingdoms fold, the earth melts at the sound of God’s voice. But for God’s people, there’s stability because the Lord Almighty is with [them]; the God of Jacob is [their] fortress.
Lord Almighty translates Yahweh Saba, meaning Lord of hosts, Lord of Armies. It’s not just that the Lord is with us. It’s that the Lord who commands the entire realm of heavenly forces is with us.
Our Lord is not some weak, ineffectual, lovey-dovey deity. He is Lord Almighty. And He is with us.
The God of Jacob is our fortress. The reference to Jacob highlights the fact that our faith is historical. It’s not made-up or other-worldly. It’s real. The life of Jacob, like the lives of other patriarchs, reminds us that God has intervened and acted on behalf of His people again and again.
That God is referred to here as our fortress seems to be similar to God as our refuge. But fortress is distinct from refuge.
Fortress speaks to inaccessible height—a tower so high and so protected that nothing can touch those inside.
In San Antonio, Texas, stands the Tower of the Americas—the 750-foot tall tower that soars above the city, giving sight for miles and miles.
I thought about how inaccessible that Tower would be without an elevator. And then I read that someone ran up the 952 steps in 5 minutes and 18 seconds. Not exactly inaccessible.
Or the Space Needle in Seattle. Same story. 832 steps, 98 flights of stairs. Someone ran up the steps in 4 minutes.
The Burj Khalifa, the tallest skyscraper in the world, 1576 steps. The fastest recorded time to climb the stairs to the top is 9 minutes, 33 seconds.
Man-made buildings, no matter how tall, no matter how supposedly-inaccessible, are not true refuges. There’s never a fortress or wall built that wasn’t eventually conquered.
Our God is a fortress of unimaginable strength and stability. There’s no getting at us because we belong to Him.
This verse was the basis for Martin Luther’s greatest hymn. He wrote: “A mighty fortress is our God; a bulwark never failing.”
God is, for His people, a mighty fortress. He, the Lord Almighty is with us, always with us. He is stability in an unstable world.
The psalmists—the sons of Korah—want us to see:
God is our complete salvation.
8 Come and see what the Lord has done, the desolations he has brought on the earth. 9 He makes wars cease to the ends of the earth. He breaks the bow and shatters the spear; he burns the shields with fire. 10 He says, “Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.” 11 The Lord Almighty is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress.
GOD IS OUR COMPLETE SALVATION
GOD IS OUR COMPLETE SALVATION
I know, I know. When I say, “God is our salvation” you’re thinking, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, preacher. We get it. We’ve heard this over and over.”
That God is our salvation isn’t new to us, but it is News. And it’s better than we might think.
We tend to think in very limited terms. We sometimes think of salvation as the moment our sins are forgiven, the moment we trust in Jesus and are given His righteousness in exchange for our sins—the moment we first believe. And, of course, that is salvation.
I hope you know that salvation (if you don’t, let’s talk).
Understand, though, salvation from our sins and the judgment of God is not all of salvation.
There is a future dimension to salvation—a time coming when all wars will cease and the peace of God will reign. Evil will be no more, death will die, Satan will be cast into the lake of fire, and we will reign with God for ever and ever.
The sons of Korah beg us to look ahead to that Day—to look, really look forward to that Day.
Psalm 46:8-9: Come and see what the Lord has done, the desolations He has brought on the earth. He bans war from pole to pole, breaks all the weapons across His knee.
God has all power. His purpose cannot be defeated. He will have the last word. His kingdom will come. His will shall be done on earth as it is in heaven. He will finish what He started.
We are meant to look forward to the day when the Lord will bring salvation and ultimate peace to meet and defeat our sin and chaos.
Verse 10 is likely the most familiar verse in Psalm 46.
It’s found on greeting cards and pictures, stitched on wall-hangings and decorations. I’ve even seen it on a hat. It’s everywhere. People love this verse, well, at least part of the verse; the part that says: “Be still, and know that I am God…”
It’s a very nice sentence—“Be still, and know that I am God…”
But, to borrow a line: “I do not think it means what you think it means.”
Do you notice the quotation marks around verse 10?
Someone is speaking. And that someone is God. The Lord Almighty is saying something. To whom is He speaking?
It’s meant for all of us to hear, but it’s directed at those who are warring and fighting and perpetrating evil and advancing chaos on the earth.
Verse 10 isn’t primarily meant as comfort for the harassed, not in the way the pictures and paintings and wall-hangings would have us take it.
It’s not nice and soothing, comforting you with an arm around your shoulder, speaking in calm, dulcet tones: “Shh, shh, shhh. Be still, and know that I am God.”
This is the Mighty One, the Lord of Angel Armies declaring to His enemies, to all who oppose and war against Him to look out.
“Step back, and see that I am God. Be still, you restless and evil world. I will, no matter what you attempt, I will be exalted among the nations. I will, without exception—no ifs, ands, or buts about it—I will be exalted in all the earth.”
“Be still, and know that I am God” is His declaration of salvation—full and complete and swift.
He will not fail. He will not fall. He will march ever onward. He is coming to judge the quick and the dead, to set the world at rights.
All those against Him might as well stop. They should just knock it off here and now, because there’s no point to their rebellion.
It’s a demand to the warring nations to “Stop it!” The verb here, according to Dale Ralph Davis, has the sense of stop or leave off. The nations are here called to stop their hostility.
Verse 10 is a command for the nations to acknowledge God’s sovereignty and kingship: “Know that I am God.”
There’s a parallel in the NT:
9 Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, 10 that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
There’s a ‘Peanuts’ cartoon I want to show you. And like a lot of other ‘Peanuts’ cartoons, it’s not necessarily funny. But it is poignant. It’s teaching us something.
[SLIDE]
Lucy and Linus are looking at the window at the pouring rain. “Boy, look at it rain,” exclaims Lucy, “What if it floods the whole world?”
Linus counters and said, “It will never do that. In the 9th Chapter of Genesis, God promised Noah that would never happen again, and the sign of the promise is the rainbow.”
Relieved, Lucy confesses that he has taken a great load off her mind, to which Linus replies, “Sound theology has a way of doing that.”
Verse 10 is that kind of sound theology. It’s the Word of God for you and for me. It’s for us to hang on to the LORD Almighty, though we are a fragile pieces of humanity. To hang on to Him, even as the earth gives way.
So, by all means, keep your paintings and coffee cups and picture frames that say, “Be still, and know that I am God.”
But just remember that it’s an expression of God’s future victory more than it is a comfort to us. It’s more declaration of battle than it is peace treaty.
God is our complete salvation. He has saved us. He is saving us. And He will, in those last days, save us.
>Because God is with us, within us, indwelling us, ever-present to help us:
We have nothing now to fear.
The earth can give way, the mountains can fall into the heart of the sea, kingdoms come crashing down.
But know this: Jesus is with us—always, ever with us. He gives us every stability and no reason to fear. In Him is security and stability and salvation.
Jesus holds on to us. Jesus holds us up. Jesus is Himself salvation, full and free.
We have every reason to be glad.
Jesus Himself makes us glad. To be in His presence is joy unending. To know Him is eternal life (John 17:3).
That He is present and we can sense His presence is reason for gladness and overwhelming joy.
We have the privilege of exalting His name daily.
The Triune God will be exalted. It’s going to happen.
Oh, the privilege we have as His sons and daughters to exalt His holy name, to praise Jesus in the midst of our friends and family and co-workers, to worship Him publically and privately, day-by-day.
Fear not. Be glad. Exalt the God who is.