Sermon Tone Analysis
Overall tone of the sermon
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“A Mighty Fortress is Our God”
There are times when we are going through life and we feel like we are hopelessly in trouble.
What’s more, there are no decisions that we could have made that could have impacted our current situation.
We were in a car accident and got hooked on pain medication
There was a fire and the house was lost
My company was restructuring and a job was lost
We have been struck with a debilitating disease
Whatever the situation, we oftentimes find ourselves in positions, where our life is out of control & we have had nothing to contribute to the factors that led up to the situation, but we are affected anyways.
Let me take you to a text that discusses this.
Observation
None of us can control the landscape or how it is shaped
It seems from the viewpoint of the Psalmist that mountains are crumbling around him
This could mean that things that seemed trustworthy are failing
The 20 yr job is gone
A vehicle is smashed in an accident
The Psalmist is being overrun by the waves
Maybe slanderous claims are coming at you
Is your integrity being questioned
Things are happening that are completely out of your control.
How do you handle this?
Application
So what does all of this mean?
Am I saying that all of life is just doom & gloom?
We can’t control anything.
Yes, kind of.
There are natural consequences to some of our actions, but that is not what the Psalmist is talking about here
The Psalmist is talking about circumstances that may surround us that are completely out of our control
Take comfort in the very first verse of
God is our refuge, and He is our strength.
We need to be grounded in this, if we are to have any hope of making it through situations like this.
The reality is, because of our faith in God, our salvation faith that is found in Jesus, we have a target on our backs, so the reality is, we should expect trouble like this to come.
But there is a promise here in the second part of verse 1: “A very present help in trouble”.
God is present in our situations.
Jesus puts it this way at the very end of His High Priestly prayer right before His arrest according to the narrative in
John 15:24
Jesus is very present in our worst situations.
As Martin Luther says in his famous hymn on :
A mighty fortress is our God,
A bulwark never failing;
Our helper He amid the flood
Of mortal ills prevailing;
Once we see how mighty our God is, takes on a new meaning.
These fights are beyond us, so that means, only God can fight them for us, so let’s let God be God in our situations.
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