Untitled Sermon

ICEBREAKER

As we look to continue in the series “Summer in Psalms” I want us to take an inward look at ourselves and see honestly how much free time we actually have now that we are in the middle of summer.

So we are going to play a little game called put a finger down busyness addition. I want everyone including leaders to take part in this, but so we don’t have to be here too long we will just do one hand instead of two.

Put a Finger Down:

Looks like the leaders were the first to sit down, but by the end of it every single person sat down, and honestly if we did both hands there is a lot more that we could have come up with. But the idea that I wanted to get across was that even though we are out of school, that does not automatically mean we are less busy, in fact I would argue we are even busier than before. But I also do want to address that last couple of activities that I named. Going to Church, A mission trip, students, summer camp while these activities are not inherently bad, the question is do you really get a chance to rest in God.

See when I went on a mission trip to Ecuador as a graduating senior, we took time to “rest” we went to some malls, went to the center of the world, even played some soccer and went to a hot spring, and while my body did rest with some of those activities, my spirit on the other hand wasn’t able to really get true rest and recover.

MAIN MESSAGE

Tonight as we continue through the book of Psalms we are going to look at one that was not written by King David, and honestly we don’t know who wrote it, but we do know when it was written and why. We are going to be looking at Psalm 46. But first let’s take a look into 2 Kings where we can understand the circumstances of why the Psalmist wrote Psalm 46.

We will start in 2 Kings 18:26-36

2 Kings 18:26–36 NLT

26 Then Eliakim son of Hilkiah, Shebna, and Joah said to the Assyrian chief of staff, “Please speak to us in Aramaic, for we understand it well. Don’t speak in Hebrew, for the people on the wall will hear.” 27 But Sennacherib’s chief of staff replied, “Do you think my master sent this message only to you and your master? He wants all the people to hear it, for when we put this city under siege, they will suffer along with you. They will be so hungry and thirsty that they will eat their own dung and drink their own urine.” 28 Then the chief of staff stood and shouted in Hebrew to the people on the wall, “Listen to this message from the great king of Assyria! 29 This is what the king says: Don’t let Hezekiah deceive you. He will never be able to rescue you from my power. 30 Don’t let him fool you into trusting in the Lord by saying, ‘The Lord will surely rescue us. This city will never fall into the hands of the Assyrian king!’ 31 “Don’t listen to Hezekiah! These are the terms the king of Assyria is offering: Make peace with me—open the gates and come out. Then each of you can continue eating from your own grapevine and fig tree and drinking from your own well. 32 Then I will arrange to take you to another land like this one—a land of grain and new wine, bread and vineyards, olive groves and honey. Choose life instead of death! “Don’t listen to Hezekiah when he tries to mislead you by saying, ‘The Lord will rescue us!’ 33 Have the gods of any other nations ever saved their people from the king of Assyria? 34 What happened to the gods of Hamath and Arpad? And what about the gods of Sepharvaim, Hena, and Ivvah? Did any god rescue Samaria from my power? 35 What god of any nation has ever been able to save its people from my power? So what makes you think that the Lord can rescue Jerusalem from me?” 36 But the people were silent and did not utter a word because Hezekiah had commanded them, “Do not answer him.”

Judah is under attack yet again, this time from the Assyrians. King Sennacherib, is giving the people of Judah a choice, open the gates and let us in or stay inside and starve and die. The king was also trying to get the people of Judah to turn on Hezekiah and in turn turn their backs on God. But the people of Judah did the exact opposite and they turned to God in prayer.

The Hezekiah then got an answer from God in the form of a message from the Prophet Isaiah, we see this response in 2 Kings 19:32-36

2 Kings 19:32–36 NLT

32 “And this is what the Lord says about the king of Assyria: “His armies will not enter Jerusalem. They will not even shoot an arrow at it. They will not march outside its gates with their shields nor build banks of earth against its walls. 33 The king will return to his own country by the same road on which he came. He will not enter this city, says the Lord. 34 For my own honor and for the sake of my servant David, I will defend this city and protect it.” 35 That night the angel of the Lord went out to the Assyrian camp and killed 185,000 Assyrian soldiers. When the surviving Assyrians woke up the next morning, they found corpses everywhere. 36 Then King Sennacherib of Assyria broke camp and returned to his own land. He went home to his capital of Nineveh and stayed there.

As we can see God answered their prayers, so much so that the people of Judah did not even have to send a single solider out to fight.

APPLICATION

REMEMBER

Now as we read through Psalm 46, keep this in the back of your mind as to understand why the psalmist wrote what he did. Psalm46:1-9

Psalm 46:1–9 NLT

1 God is our refuge and strength, always ready to help in times of trouble. 2 So we will not fear when earthquakes come and the mountains crumble into the sea. 3 Let the oceans roar and foam. Let the mountains tremble as the waters surge! Interlude 4 A river brings joy to the city of our God, the sacred home of the Most High. 5 God dwells in that city; it cannot be destroyed. From the very break of day, God will protect it. 6 The nations are in chaos, and their kingdoms crumble! God’s voice thunders, and the earth melts! 7 The Lord of Heaven’s Armies is here among us; the God of Israel is our fortress. Interlude 8 Come, see the glorious works of the Lord: See how he brings destruction upon the world. 9 He causes wars to end throughout the earth. He breaks the bow and snaps the spear; he burns the shields with fire.

These first 9 verses show case the might of who God is, the writer here wanted to make sure that the people of Judah would not forget what God had done for them. Whenever they would sing this Psalm, they would remember how God sent his angels to defeat the Assyrians and bring peace to Judah.

As we look into this idea of restlessness we need to and how we can take time to rest I want to give you just three words that you can remember to help you rest in God. The first word is simple: REMEMBER.

We get this idea of remembering from the psalmist, recapping how God saved his people from the Assyrians. If we go back and notice there was not a single solider who fought in the battle, the only one who did the fighting was God on behalf of Judah, no one in Judah could claim credit for what had happened, only God could take all the credit.

We it comes to this idea of rest and resting in God, we need to take time and remember exactly what God has done for us. This can come in two different ways, one is reading the Bible, His Word, which was written so we could know what He had done for us and so we could know more about who God is. The other way is to go back through how God has moved in your life and remembering all that God has done specifically for you.

STILL

Now while we are doing this time to remember what God has done for us there is something else we need to do has well and we get this from verse 10, Psalm 46:10

Psalm 46:10 NLT

10 “Be still, and know that I am God! I will be honored by every nation. I will be honored throughout the world.”

We get our next word right from that first phrase: Still.

There is two things that one needs to do when they are still. One don’t move and the second don’t speak. This is a time where you quiet your mind and quiet your body. This idea of resting in God is a time where you put away all distractions and put all of your focus on Him.

During this time of resting you don’t want to have anything around you that can distract you or draw your attention away from remembering what God has done for you.

LISTEN

During in this time of rest we can even ask God questions and ask him for answers to what we don’t know or are confused about even.

This actually leads us into our last point, but first lets finish up Psalm 46, with verse 11. Psalm 46:11

Psalm 46:11 NLT

11 The Lord of Heaven’s Armies is here among us; the God of Israel is our fortress. Interlude

God is here among us, we are not alone. So if we have a question for God and are looking for answers, there is one last thing we need to do when we are resting: LISTEN.