The Lord Almighty is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress

The Lord Almighty is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress Psalm 46, John 17: 20-26 So much has happened since we were last able to gather together twenty nine weeks ago that it almost seems alien for some of us to be back together today, even without the face masks and social distancing. At times we've been locked down in our houses with only one walk a day allowed, We've known and seen people working from home, being furloughed, losing their jobs altogether. We've been separated from family and friends for long periods, supported the key workers, seen and, for some of us, experienced a good deal of loss and suffering, and all the while not only our own lives but the lives of people throughout the whole world has been turned upside down. And that because of a terrible virus, which some amazingly continue to deny, that has wreaked havoc across the globe. And whilst some have been applauded others have been criticised and condemned, and whilst some spoke of a brave new world rising from the ashes, experience of the reality of human nature has told the true story. So that it's almost as if, as we begin to enter the darker months of autumn, as if an ever growing mist is spreading over society in general. We put our faith in our leaders to deal with the problem, some of us have been following their pronouncements daily, but somehow they've not been able to come up with the answers which we'd hoped for, and now it seems that there's still no end in sight... and the world asks: "When will it end". However we read in the gospel of John, two chapters before that of our second reading, these words spoken by Jesus to his disciples: "As it is you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world". Words which are surely true of us too when we have been reconciled to God through the death and resurrection of his Son Jesus Christ. So that it follows that our thinking regarding the current world crisis is to be radically different from the world. Not that we're to treat it, and the new rules that we're being given to live by more lightly than the world, as some, apparently claiming their own God enabled immunity, are doing, but rather that we're to look to and seek the help of the one who created and sustains the world ... the one and only Living God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. After all he's the one who was and is and always will be, he's the one about whom the prophet Isaiah says in chapter 40 of that book: "Do you not know? Have you not heard? Has it not been told you from the beginning? Have you not understood since the earth was founded? He sits enthroned above the circle of the earth, and its people are like grasshoppers. He stretches out the heavens like a canopy, and spreads them out like a tent to live in. He brings princes to naught and reduces the rulers of this world to nothing." This is the God whom the writer of Psalm 46 has come to believe, and to trust in, so that, though no doubt he's faced many difficulties himself and seen the people of God suffering a great deal at the hands of others, nevertheless he's able to say with confidence (verse 1) that: "God is our refuge and strength, an ever present help in trouble". This is a psalm which, it's thought, was inspired by God's deliverance of Jerusalem from the army of Sennacherib, the Assyrian King, in 701 BC, twenty years after his predecessor had conquered and depopulated the Northern Kingdom of the divided Israel. Now it looked as if Judah would suffer the same fate as the Assyrians besieged the City but then their king, Hezekiah, turned to the Lord in prayer and, after Isaiah had brought God's word to him saying that the Lord would defend and save them, 2 Kings chapter 20 verse 35 tells us: "That night the angel of the Lord went out and put to death a hundred and eighty-five thousand men in the Assyrian camp. When the people got up the next morning - there were all the dead bodies! So Sennacherib king of Assyria broke camp and withdrew. He returned to Nineveh and stayed there." God had rescued his people! Apparently they were a defeated people with no hope, but they renewed their trust in God, the one who had brought their ancestors out of Egypt, fed and watered them in the desert for 40 years, brought them into the land which he had been preparing for them for centuries and enabled them to conquer it. Yes they'd then rejected him but still, when they called, he answered them ... and in such a miraculous way. So that our psalmist can imagine the worst that can possibly happen to God's people and yet conclude: "We will not fear". As Spurgeon says: "When all things are excited to fury, and reveal their utmost power to disturb, faith smiles serenely. She is not afraid of noise, nor even of real force. She knows that the Lord stilleth the raging of the sea, and holdeth the waves in the hollow of his hand ... Evil may ferment, wrath may boil, and pride may foam, but the brave heart of holy confidence trembles not. Great men who are like mountains may quake for fear in times of great calamity, but the one whose trust is in God needs never be dismayed." And now the psalmist thinks about Jerusalem, wherein God has made his dwelling, and therefore about God's people who live there in his presence observing that: "There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God" ... a reference it seems to the spring waters brought into the City by a tunnel during the reign of Hezekiah so that that the people might have their own water supply. Although, symbolically, these streams represent God's continual gracious rule over his people which stretches out like so many streams to all whom he has chosen for his own. As Spurgeon again says: "Divine grace like a smoothly flowing, fertilising, full and never-failing river, yields refreshment and consolation to believers. This is the river of the water of life, of which the church above as well as the church below partakes of evermore. It is no boisterous ocean but a placid stream, it is not stayed in its course by earthquakes or crumbling mountains, it follows its serene course without disturbance". He concludes "Happy are they who know from their own experience that there is such a river of God". And because of this, and because "God is within her," the psalmist goes on to say: "she (the Church of God) will not fall". After all how could that be when he alone is the one who created all things by his word saying: "let there be" and it was (Genesis chapter 1), and therefore who alone can lift his voice once more, so that what he once made out of nothing will melt into nothing again. No he will continue to help his people at break of day as he helped them against the Assyrian army. The fact is, concludes the psalmist, that the Lord Almighty, far more powerful than any other power in Heaven or on earth, is with us; that the God of Jacob, who took a man, Jacob, who was weak and fallible, as we all are, and made him into a great nation, no less than God's own people, that he is our fortress, the one who surrounds all who are his with his loving arms, so that none can harm us. And if you don't believe me "Come and see the works of the Lord" says the writer of Psalm 46 (verse 8). Think on the examples of his Sovereignty and power seen throughout the history of his people, how he built them up and brought desolation on their foes. And yet also remember that he is the God who builds up who, after creating all things, saw that it was very good. That he is therefore the God who brings peace and harmony to what soon became, after its creation, a troubled and divided world. The God who (verse 9 of our psalm) "makes wars cease to the ends of the earth, breaks the bow and shatters the spear (and) burns the shields with fire". Something that we now know will finally become a reality when the risen and ascended Jesus returns again At which point we find God himself speaking into the psalm, giving us the final word on the matter, telling all peoples: "Be still, and know that I am God". Quieten your hearts and minds that you might perceive the evidence of my working throughout the earth and hear my voice, that still small voice of calm which Elijah heard in the midst of the earthquake, wind and storm. Then you will surely know that: "I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth". And now, once more, we have a final statement of confident assurance from the psalmist in verse 11: "The Lord Almighty is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress". Such wonderful truths for each one of us to take ownership of this morning so that we might take Psalm 46 for our comfort and strengthening, much in the same way as did the great reformer Martin Luther leading him to pen the hymn: "A mighty Fortress is our God" along with its tune. But wait a minute we're not talking about some great and mighty enemy who are at the gates of the City threatening to overrun and destroy us, and nor are we battling against those who would throw us into prison and take our lives because we dare to stand against false religion. We can see how the truths expressed in our psalm would very much apply to them, but we're suffering in different ways, ways that really don't compare with their suffering. What's more, we say, our suffering is a new type of suffering, involving for many the loss of jobs, income, and self-worth, social alienation, depression, not to mention the effects of the virus itself. What right then do we have to, by faith, apply our psalm to ourselves and recommend it to others so that we and they might find strength from the Lord today? Well let's look at our passage from John chapter 17 where Jesus, having finished his teaching ministry with his Disciples, turns to the Father in Prayer. And firstly in the chapter he prays for himself asking his Father in heaven that through the terrible ordeal that he is about to face and, as in his actions he will bring glory to the Father, so all would be done in accordance with God the Father's will, such that he himself will receive the glory that has been promised to him as he returns once more to his place in the Godhead. Then Jesus brings his Disciples in prayer before the Father, those whom he has been given out of the world, those who have believed in him and who now will be sent out into the world to carry out the work of world evangelisation whilst all the while suffering great persecution from a world which rejects their teaching and their Lord. And he prays for their protection, and he prays that they will be enabled more and more to reflect the nature of Christ in them. And perhaps we'd expect Jesus to stop there, but he doesn't. Instead Jesus, God himself, praying in his own name, praying therefore with power beyond our imagining prays: "also for those who will believe in me through their message". In other words, John tells us, the last people who Jesus is thinking about and bringing before his father in heaven before his arrest leading to his crucifixion, are the millions of individuals down through the ages who would respond to the gospel message ... in other words he's thinking of and praying for you and me living today in our EH postcode properties, he's thinking of and praying for us as we gather together in person or over the air waves as part of the Ebenezer United Free Church of Scotland congregation. And what does he ask for us from the Father? Well firstly he prays for unity. A unity which isn't about taking a rag tag bunch of folk and somehow making them into a group of people who get on together and are able to work side by side. No this is a unity which is all about being united in Jesus Christ, becoming, because of our God enabled relationship with him, a part of the ongoing relationship enjoyed by the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. It means actually sharing in the glory, the honour, which the Father has bestowed upon the Son because of his fulfilment of his mission. It's a unity therefore which is ever the same and which binds Christians, binds the family of God together as one across the centuries. And then Jesus prays too that our witness, through word and action, would be so powerful in its influence that the world would be persuaded about the truth of the gospel, being challenged as the Spirit convicts them, to come in faith and with repentant hearts to the foot of the cross and so to receive salvation themselves. And finally he prays that we would each, at the last, be brought into his presence in heaven itself. All God's children therefore, all those who are part of the true church past present and future, are on the prayer list of our Lord and Saviour and have such a high and wonderful calling. So never let us feel that we are somehow left out of any of the assurances, any of the promises of God which he reveals to us in his Word. As we find ourselves in very difficult and strange times, do I, do you, believe that God is our refuge and strength, an ever present help in trouble? That the Lord Almighty is with us that the God of Jacob is our fortress? And if so are we going to act on that belief, allowing the Lord to change our attitudes, our reactions to our circumstances, our whole life, so that more and more we become his pure and holy child, his pure and holy church. So that not only we but the world around us too will know for sure that our God alone is Sovereign, and that at all times. Amen