NewCity Orlando Sermons
Summer in the Psalms of Refuge | Psalm 46
Pastor of Formation & Mission Benjamin Kandt continues our Summer in the Psalms of Refuge series, preaching from Psalm 46.
Hello everyone. This is Pastor Damien. You're listening to Sermon Audio from New City, orlando. At New City we believe all of us need all of Jesus for all of life. For more resources, visit our website at newcityorlandocom. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 1:Good morning church. Please join me in reading the prayer of illumination. Good morning church. Please join me in reading the prayer of illumination. Breathe in us Holy Spirit that our thoughts may all be holy. Act in us, holy Spirit, that our work may all be holy. Draw our hearts, holy Spirit, that we may love all that is holy. Strengthen us, holy Spirit, to defend all that is holy. Guard us, holy Spirit, that we may always be holy. Amen.
Speaker 1:Our scripture is Psalm 46. God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore, we will not fear, though the earth gives way, though the mountains be moved into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains tremble at its swelling, there is a river whose streams make glad. The city of God. The holy habitation of the Most High God, is in the midst of her. She shall not be moved. God will help her. When morning dawns, the nations rage, the kingdoms totter, he utters his voice and the earth melts. The Lord of hosts is with us. The God of Jacob is our fortress. Come behold the works of the Lord, how he has brought desolations on the earth. He makes wars cease to the end of the earth. He breaks the bow and shatters the spear. He burns the chariots with fire. Be still and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations. I will be exalted in the earth. The Lord of hosts is with us. The God of Jacob is our fortress. This is God's word. Thanks be to.
Speaker 2:God. I happen to know that Joshua just came off of a night shift, and so that was evidence that God really is a very present help in trouble, what you just saw. So thank you, joshua, I appreciate you reading that for us. So, psalm 46, if you have a Bible or device, go ahead and get that open and in front of you now. Open and in front of you now.
Speaker 2:In 1947, francis Schaeffer was on an airplane flying from Europe to the United States and he was flying over the Atlantic in one of those older kind of DC-4 airplanes with two engines on each wings. And as they were flying, suddenly two of the engines just stopped working on one of the wings. And since he had experienced flying quite a bit, schaefer got up and he walked to the front of the plane to go get his coat. He thought, if we're going to go down in the middle of the Atlantic, I'd like to have my jacket. And as he walked up there, he saw the flight attendant and said, hey, something's wrong with the engines. To which she replied you people always think something's wrong with the engines. Please go sit back down. He went and sat down and started praying, and as soon as he sat in his seat. The co-pilot came out and said everybody, we're in trouble, you need to get your life jackets on, the engine has gone out on one of our wings and we are going down, at which point Schaefer continues to pray. At that very moment, an SOS emergency message went out to the United States and was broadcast on all of the televisions in the US, saying that a plane was going down over the Atlantic Ocean In St Louis Missouri. Edith Schaefer, francis' wife, saw the emergency announcement and immediately got on her knees with her three daughters and began to pray that God would save this plane. She didn't know if Francis was on it or not, but she had a hunch.
Speaker 2:At that moment Schaefer was telling the story. He said we started getting so low that we could see the waves of the water lapping up and splashing as we were getting closer and closer to the surface of the water. He said just at that moment, as we were going down, down, down down, and we all braced for impact, the engines kicked back on and they were able to fly and land in Canada. When the plane landed, schaefer gets off the airplane and goes and finds the pilot and says to the pilot hey, what happened? To which the pilot replied well, it's a strange thing, something we can't explain. Only rarely do two motors stop on one wing, but you can make an absolute rule that, when they do, they don't start again. We don't understand it. To which Schaefer replied oh, I do. The pilot looked at him quizzically and Schaefer said my father restarted the engines because I was praying that that would happen. The pilot gave him the strangest look and then turned and walked away from him.
Speaker 2:Before 2020, mental disorders were the leading cause of the global health-related burden, with anxiety at the front of them. The United States of America is the most anxious nation on earth as of 2023, because about a third of US citizens describe themselves as experiencing symptoms of anxiety. As far as diagnosable disorders, there's about 40 million American adults that suffer from some sort of an anxiety disorder. Now, if you've ever experienced anxiety or been around somebody who has or had a panic attack or an anxiety attack, you recognize how important that word suffer really is. There's a profound amount of suffering with an anxiety disorder. The average high school student today has the same level of anxiety as the average psychiatric patient in the early 1950s.
Speaker 2:This is the world that we live in right now and so in the midst of this world, what if we were a non-anxious presence among an anxious people? What would that look like? What if the church was characterized by bold joy? What would it be like if we lived Like? If we lived more fearless and joyful rather than fearful and joyless? I think Psalm 46 has something to tell us about that, and so I want to look at this text together under three points. The broad point is from fear to joy, and we're going to look at it, breaking it down kind of chunk by chunk. So if you have the text in front of you, look with me at Psalm 46, verse 1. The strength of God's security that's what we're going to look at here. Verse 1 says this God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore, we will not fear Pause.
Speaker 2:This sermon series this summer in the Psalms of refuge came out of two insights. The first was the book of Psalms, is what's called Hebrew poetry, and one of the characteristics of Hebrew poetry is the use of metaphor. And there's a book called Seeing the Psalms by William Brown, where he studies the metaphorical, the ways the Psalms use metaphors, and he argues that refuge is the most common metaphor, the foundational metaphor for the entire book of Psalms. That's got some significance to it. Some people have argued the purpose of the whole book of Psalms is to teach you, train you, catechize you, indoctrinate, educate, train you to bring yourself to God as your refuge. That's the purpose of the entire book of Psalms, and so, if that's true, we should find refuge in many of the Psalms, maybe even all of the Psalms, if you include its semantic siblings, like shelter, strong tower, the shadow of your wings, as Ryan preached last week. All over the book of Psalms you have these refuge metaphors that are there because life, this side of Eden and the new creation, is full of trouble, and the Psalms know that. And so that was the first insight that refuge is the most common and foundational metaphor in the book of Psalms.
Speaker 2:The second one was my growing appreciation for, in psychology, what's called attachment theory. Now, attachment theory is fairly recent. There's a guy named John Bowlby who's kind of the pioneer of it, but I was talking with a counselor who counsels patients in North Africa so not Orlando and this person graduated from the same counseling program I graduated from, and so I asked him. I said hey, you know, what have you realized, is fairly culturally contingent in psychology, and what is culturally transcendent, in other words, what works in Orlando and North Africa equally well, without skipping a beat, he said attachment theory. North Africa equally well, without skipping a beat, he said attachment theory. The reason why is because attachment theory argues from your neurobiology, not merely from your psyche. Okay, so it's working at the level of what a human being is embodied and then building up from there.
Speaker 2:And there's three basic principles to attachment theory, and this is why I'm going on about this, because I think this actually gives us some insight into what it looks like to take God as our refuge. Here's the three components. The first one is called maintenance of proximity. Now imagine for a moment you're at a playground and you either have kids there or you're with somebody who has kids. So it's not weird that you're at a playground and you're watching children with their caregivers. Okay, that you're at a playground and you're watching children with their caregivers, okay.
Speaker 2:And as you're watching children with their caregivers, you watch this happen. The kids go, venture off into the playground and do something because they've left mom or dad or grandma or grandpa, whoever their caregiver is. They've left their attachment figure, who's their secure base. They launch out into the world to explore what is otherwise a dangerous and risky thing to do. But here's the thing they don't have a lot of concern because they know they can always return to the attachment figure, the caregiver, as their safe haven. This is the literal language in attachment theory.
Speaker 2:Secure base, safe haven, sound like anything, sound like refuge, because when you get scared or hurt or sad, which is inevitable as you venture away from your attachment figure, you always have a place to run back home to where you're going to be nurtured and soothed and cared for. And this whole process is what's called maintenance of proximity. It's this awareness of how far or close I am to the one who is my secure base and my safe haven. Read the book of Psalms now and watch them pop in new ways as you consider the psalmist just aching to maintain proximity to their refuge. They have come to know Yahweh, the true and living God, as their secure base from which they can launch out into the world and their safe haven to which they can return for calm and comfort. I believe the purpose of the book of Psalms is to train you in maintenance. Proximity with the Lord. That's what I believe it exists. For those were the two insights behind Summer and the Psalms of Refuge.
Speaker 2:This is what Louis Cozzolino, a more modern scholar on attachment theory, says. He says, quote the management of fear and anxiety remains the core component of our attachment relationships. The reason why you have a securely attached relationship with another person is to manage your fear and anxiety, because fear is fundamental to what it means to be human. My question is not whether or not you experience anxiety, it's if, how often and what does it look like? Because anxiety and fear are just core to the human experience and attachment relationships are meant to help us manage that well.
Speaker 2:And so if we securely attach to God, to the Father, son and Holy Spirit, then it makes sense when the psalmist says God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore, we will not fear. It doesn't mean there's not troubles or trials. It doesn't mean there's not hard things. It means that the neurobiological way that fear is dealt with is through securely attached relationships that can actually calm you at a nervous system level. This is why the idea that there's like spiritual parts of your life and material parts of your life is nonsense. Your spirituality has to be able to calm your nervous system or it's useless. That's what this psalm is arguing. Now I wouldn't have used the language of nervous system. I understand that. But one of my favorite things is to realize that modern psychology is just unpacking biblical psychology At least the good modern psychology is. And so when we read this psalms and we see this is how refuge works.
Speaker 2:Look with me again at Psalm 46, verse 1. God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore, we will not fear, though the earth gives way, though the mountains, be moved into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains tremble at its swelling. Now we're going to leave the language of modern psychology. We're going to go back into the language, the richer, more ancient and ever new language of the Bible.
Speaker 2:And in the biblical imagination, the sea is topsy-turvy, chaos. It's been that way since Genesis 1. And mountains are the most stable and steadfast things in all of creation. So God is often compared to mountains because of how sturdy and immfast things in all of creation. So God is often compared to mountains because of how sturdy and immutable, unmovable they are. But in these verses the steady and stoic mountains are trembling with fear before the rising seas. In other words, the psalmist is trying to argue even the most steadfast things in our awareness, in our existence, can sometimes feel threatened by the rising seas of difficulty and turmoil.
Speaker 2:And so it's as if the psalm is personifying the mountains. Right, they're trembling, they're afraid. It's almost like, even though these mountains have incredible longevity, it's not hindered their memory. They remember the great flood from Genesis, chapter 7, when the text says that the waters prevailed over the mountains. It's almost like the mountains remember that ancient experience of what it was like to be immersed in the flood. And so the psalmist is reading their Bible. They're reading Genesis and they're bringing pictures of Genesis and they're articulating that, in praise to God, we're not the ones that invented that. The Bible does that. The writers of the Bible do that, and so we do it like them.
Speaker 2:And so, as he's referencing these mountains, he talks about the people of God not having fear. The mountains are trembling, but where is that calm composure coming from in the face of fear that is so intense that even the mountains tremble? Where does that come from? Well, in the transience of this world, saints take up residence in their God. In the transience of this world, saints take up residence in their God because God is the only thing in our experience that's more immovable and immutable than the mountains. That's what the psalmist is arguing. And so, when the bottom falls out, you need two things. You need a refuge from threats around you, but you need strength to uphold within you, and that's why the psalmist begins God is our refuge and strength. Internal threats is what we need, a strength for. External threats is what we need a refuge for, and God is both of those things, for you or to you.
Speaker 2:If you have a Bible like mine, you'll see there's a footnote where it says a very present. There's a footnote leads down here and it says or well-proved, well-proved, tried and true. You could say I think there's something significant about that, because what the psalmist is trying to say is listen, everything I'm talking about, about calming your anxiety, your nervous system, all that stuff doesn't work if you just have notions about God. If you know about God, this won't work. You have to know God, you have to actually know God.
Speaker 2:A well-proved relationship with God, where he has shown up on your behalf in real ways, in lived experience, as the postmoderns taught us to say, that's what we need from God. We need that such that it would show up in our nervous system Like I want you to know the attributes of God. That's really important. I want you to know that God is infinite, eternal, unchangeable and is being goodness, justice. All these attributes about who God is. I want you to know that that's who God is, and I want you to know those attributes to be well proved by experience, so that you can trust God in every experience. I want you to depend on, rely on, put your roots deep into the immutability of God. That's not just a fancy, theological, technical term, it's a lived reality for you, because then we can say with the psalmist therefore, we will not fear. God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore, we will not fear. This is worthless if it's mere sentimentality, if this doesn't work in practice, if this is not a lived reality, it is worthless. Do you understand that that's so important? It's what's called insistent realism. I've got an insistence that these things would be tried and true, well-proved, as the psalm says, in your everyday life experience, and so what I'm basically saying is I want you to put the life instruction that's on offer in the scriptures. I want you to put it to test in your real lives, such that the Bible's way of being, what's called the way of Jesus, is actually empirically proven to be effective in your life. That's what I want for you. That's what I want for me.
Speaker 2:Francis Schaeffer again has this amazing illustration. He talks about two chairs. He says that the world, according to the biblical way of viewing things, is made up of the seen and the unseen, what some people have called the natural and the supernatural. And Schaeffer says there's two chairs and at any given moment you are sitting in one of these two chairs. The first chair is the chair that has a total view of reality that brings the seen and the unseen together. For instance, psalm 22 says that God is enthroned upon the praises of his people. Do you see him here? I don't. Is he here? Absolutely, according to Psalm 22, enthroned upon our praises this morning. So the person in chair one sees life like that, believes that Jesus actually is the worship leader in here. The other chair lives just in light of what they can sense, see, hear, feel, taste, touch, smell. Their empirically proven sense of the world. That's the only thing that they take to be true. And here's the thing. Don't think, oh, I'm a Christian, so I must be here. You can acknowledge the unseen realm. You can believe with your, you can articulate with your mouth that there is a supernatural reality and live your everyday existence right here, in chair number two.
Speaker 2:In fact, I think many of us live in chair number two most of our lives. It's why we don't pray, it's why we have intense fear about what other people think of us, it's why we live in ways that seem so out of accordance with what the Bible seems to have on offer to us. It's because we sit and live our lives out of chair number two. And so, if that's the case, this would be when we say, yeah, we believe in God, we believe in Jesus, we believe the Holy Spirit, we believe that these things are unaccessed. When we say that with our mouths, but then we sit in chair two. It would be like a starving man sitting before a banquet of food and saying I believe that that food exists and it's nourishing, but he never takes a bite. Believe that that food exists and it's nourishing, but he never takes a bite. Many of us live our Christian lives just like that, because we live in chair too.
Speaker 2:And so Schaeffer goes on to make this distinction between what he calls unbelief and unfaith. He says unbelief are people who say they don't believe and act as if they don't. Many of your neighbors and co-workers and friends and some of your family, they live in unbelief. But unfaith is when people who say they believe but act as if they don't. That's unfaith. And so what I think is real is that many of us live everyday lives in unfaith and that's why we live in fear, according to Psalm 46.
Speaker 2:But if we learn through practice and experience that God is a very present help, a well-proven help in trouble, then we won't fear. But not only will we not fear that's important but we will have joy. Less fear, more joy. Who doesn't want that? Look with me at verse four. This is the second point the joy of God's city, verse four. There is a river whose streams here's the word make glad. I'm subbing the word joy in there make glad. The city of God, the holy habitation of the most high God, is in the midst of her. She shall not be moved. God will help her when morning dawns. You see, there are two fundamental emotional fuels to your life fear or joy. I really believe this.
Speaker 2:This comes from attachment theory, that you were hardwired from birth to experience fear. I think there's only two things like loud noises and falling. It's the only two things you're afraid of. Everything else has been learned, aka taught to you by other people's fears. That actually makes me a little afraid as a father. Happy Father's Day everyone. We are hardwired for fear, but we're also hardwired for joy. You ever seen a newborn baby look up at its mother's eyes and giggle and like there's an oxytocin and dopamine's just getting dumped all up in their brain and you see them smile and and the mom's experiencing some of that too. You were hardwired neurobiologically for what's called attachment joy. One of the cool things about being a counselor is we get to say and do things that nobody else gets to say and do with people. Here's an example Counselors ask funny questions like this.
Speaker 2:If those tears could talk, what would they say? I've asked that question. I'm gonna still ask that question. It's a good question. Listen, if fear could talk, this is what it would say. I am powerless and alone. That's the voice of fear.
Speaker 2:Interestingly, people who study how trauma occurs would say that there are traumatic events, potentially traumatic events. In other words, you can experience something that's potentially traumatic, but not be traumatized by it. What leads a traumatic event into being traumatizing is how you experience that event, and then your experience of the event determines the effects, like post-traumatic stress disorder or post-traumatic growth, which is a real possibility. The experience is what makes the difference and research shows what makes a potentially traumatic event traumatizing is if you feel powerless and alone in it. That's the voice of fear. Powerless, I am powerless and alone.
Speaker 2:Here's the voice of joy. I'm so glad to be with you, I'm so glad to be with you. When I read that in a book about attachment theory, I started. Almost daily when I pick up my kids, I look at them in the eyes and I say I'm so glad to be with you. Why? Because that's what joy sounds like when it talks. That's so important for understanding the calls to rejoice in the Lord always in Scripture. Why? Because it's not contingent about your circumstances in scripture. Why? Because it's not contingent about your circumstances. It's about a securely attached relationship with God, where God looks at you and you look back at God and you say to each other I'm so glad to be with you. Life hurts like hell right now. I'm so glad to be with you. That's how you can rejoice and have sorrow simultaneously. They're not at odds with each other. Joy marries into your other emotional experiences and it colors and taints them differently. That's what joy can do, and so the psalmist says this in verse four.
Speaker 2:There is a river whose streams make glad, the city of God, the holy habitation of the most high. There's debate about what this is really talking about, because there's not really a river that runs through Jerusalem. So if this city of God is talking about Jerusalem, which it usually is, there's not really a river. There's kind of like a subterranean stream that they can get water from. But it would be a lot to say that there's a river that runs through the city. So what is this river? Well, I think it's. Verse 5 tells us God is in the midst of her. I think the river that's being talked about here is God himself. And so what is this city of God? It sounds more like either the Garden of Eden in Genesis 2, or Ezekiel's vision of what the temple is going to look like in Ezekiel 47. Or Ezekiel's vision of what the temple is going to look like in Ezekiel 47. This river, this city, is different from the Jerusalem that's in Palestine right now. It's different from that.
Speaker 2:The psalm refers to something more than a literal city or a literal stream. The city is the people of God and the river is the spirit of God. The city is not made of bricks and mortar, but it's a holy community, new city. It's a holy community that has a designer and a builder and an inhabitant who is God, according to Hebrews 11.10. The city is the city of the living God. It's the heavenly Jerusalem, as Revelation 21 calls it.
Speaker 2:And notice what happens here. There's a mutual indwelling. We have refuge in God, but God is in the midst of us. Do you see this mutuality that happens, this mutual indwelling in our relationship with God? We are in Christ, and yet Christ is in us. The New Testament tells us.
Speaker 2:This is why, in the early church, many of the martyrs, as they were being marched into the Roman arena to their death, would say things like this quote another will be in me, who will suffer for me. And they faced martyrdom with a boldness and a confidence and a joy that put the Romans on their heels. They could kill them by the thousands, but they couldn't stop them somehow. And so when I get anxious which I do when I get fearful which I do I will put my hand on my heart, I'll take a deep breath and I'll say something like Christ is within me. And it's just a simple symbolic gesture to remind me. Just as this breath is coming in and going out, it's calming me, it's bringing me back into touch with reality, because fear, anxiety, is kind of a future trip. It pulls you into the there and then, and I'm trying to get back into the here and now Christ is within me and it grounds me right here and now because, unlike the warring waves of the world, the peaceful presence of the immutable God flows through his city. The hearts of her citizens will rip with they flow. We flow with rivers of living water, the spirit that was given to us once Jesus was glorified.
Speaker 2:That's what John 7 says, and so verse 5 says this God will help her when morning dawns. Some of you right now are in the dark night of affliction and you're hearing me talk right now, and some of you it's landing in a way where you're like it's inviting you into refuge in God and it's encouraging, and some of you you've tuned me out, you've shut down. This is almost too hard for you to hear. Listen, even in that moment. It's okay to let other people hold hope for you when you're waiting in the dark night. Because, listen, the psalmist says that God's help will come, but it doesn't come immediately. God will help her when morning dawns.
Speaker 2:Our gladness is not found in having no troubles, but that God is ready to help us at the break of dawn. This is why Psalm 30 can say weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes with the morning. Why? Because happiness is sourced in situations. It comes from the same word as happening or happenstance. That's where happiness derives itself from. It's sourced in situations. Pleasure is sourced in your senses. You see things that are beautiful, you taste something that's delicious, that's pleasure. But joy is sourced in securely attached relationships. So joy is not contingent upon your senses. You might feel pain and joy, and joy is not contingent upon your circumstances. You might be in a really awful situation and be joyful. Those are not at odds with each other, because joy comes from saying to the Lord and the Lord saying back to you I'm so glad to be with you, I'm so glad you're with me. And learning to say that from the heart is the difference between the immovable church in verse five and the mutable mountains of verse two. Mountains can't say that the church can, because God is our ballast, he's our counterweight, he's our keel when the strong winds blow and they do blow.
Speaker 2:Look with me at verse six. The nations rage, the kingdoms totter. He utters his voice, the earth melts. There's definitely like a rock band title in there. Somewhere there's an intensity to the situations the people of God find themselves in. But look at verse eight with me, and we look at point three the peace of God's glory. Verse eight says this Come behold the works of point three, the peace of God's glory. Verse 8 says this Come behold the works of Yahweh, how he has brought desolations on the earth. He makes wars cease to the end of the earth. He breaks the bow and shatters the spear. He burns the chariots with fire. You see outside the city. The world is a wreck because evil is unstable is a wreck because evil is unstable.
Speaker 2:Verses 2 and 3 were about the trouble of created nature. Right, it's mountains and waves and seas and all that stuff. But verses 6 through 10 are about the trouble of human culture. So here's where troubles come from Created nature that's been cursed in the fall and corrupt culture, wicked men and women, even some of us right, like even within us, our own human culture, the ways in which our corruption shows up in the things that we do. And so we recognize, if we just pay close attention, that life is rife with strife, like we hear, of wars and rumors of wars. We are besieged without and within. But those who have the eyes of faith, who live in chair number one, who can see the world as it truly is, who can see the unseen real, if you will, by faith, they know that God's actually at work in the world. Verse 8 puts it like this God makes war on war. Verse 9 says that he's violent. He is violent against technologies of violence. God brings peace by removing the weapons of war, the weapons of war. There we go.
Speaker 2:But here's something that happens as you're tracking through the psalm. It's as if the whole psalm comes to a screeching halt, a hushing halt even, because in verse 10, god interrupts. God interrupts and says this be still and know that I am God. See how God's talking now. Be still and know that I am God. Does God ever interrupt your prayers? He does often in the Psalms. So if the Psalms are in any way, a template for our prayer life, which I think they are. Maybe he interrupts your prayers sometimes.
Speaker 2:Ryan's text from last week. He interrupts Psalm 91 and just decides to add his own ending. God interrupts, he breaks in. He says, yes, all this is happening, the chaos of the world. But God interrupts, breaks through, breaks in and says be still and know that I am God. The reason why is because God keeps a knowledge of himself out of the reach of those who attempt to take matters into their own hands. Many of you live with anxiety and fear because you live grasping and grabbing to take everything, total control, ultimate responsibility over your life. And God interrupts you and he says be still and know that I am God. In other words, you are not. There's a freedom, there's a fearlessness in that, as we humble ourselves, we get to watch God exalt himself. I will be exalted among the nations. I will be exalted in the earth. That's the very next lines in verse 10. It sounds a little bit like 1 Peter 5.
Speaker 2:If you know that text, peter says this that God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. Some of you have been exhausted because you're living within the opposition of God, because of your own arrogance. He opposes the proud, he likes stiff arms, the proud, but he gives grace upon grace to the humble. Jack Miller used to say grace rolls downhill, so go low. Peter goes on. He says this humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God, so that, at the proper time, he may exalt you casting all your anxieties on him. No-transcript. And the outcome will be you'll cast your anxieties on him, knowing that he cares for you. As you go low, grace runs downhill. You feel less in control of life, which is scary and a good thing, because you get to be still and know that you don't have to be God today. That's why he interrupts us, and so in this series, we've been trying to apply these things to the all of life guide, which you can get in the foyer when you walk out.
Speaker 2:The all of life guide is basically us trying to walk you through a process to develop habits of humbling yourself before God. One of those habits of humbling yourself is a weekly rhythm of rest. What we say is to set aside one day to rest from all that we know to be work. In his book on the Sabbath called the Rest of God, a guy named Mark Buchanan says it like this quote in a culture where busyness is a fetish and stillness is laziness, rest is sloth. But without rest we miss the rest of God, the rest he invites us to enter more fully so that we might know him more deeply. Be still and know that I am God. Some knowing is never pursued, only received, and for that you need to be still. Sabbath is both a day and an attitude to nurture such stillness. It is both time on a calendar and a disposition of the heart. It is a day we enter, but just as much a way we see. Sabbath imparts the rest of God, actual, physical, mental, spiritual rest. But also the rest of God, the things of God's nature and presence that we will miss in our busyness. God says be still and know that I am God.
Speaker 2:The psalmist again is probably quoting his own Bible. He's reading this story in Exodus 14, where the Israelites we had it in our call to worship where the Israelites are leaving Egypt and they're walking out. And as they're walking out they realize that there's the Red Sea in front of them and Pharaoh and his army in pursuit behind them, and they're terrified. The people of God are caught within this pincer grip between cursed nature and rebellious culture, which is where we always find ourselves. And so in Exodus 14, 13, this was our call to worship. Moses said to the people fear not. You see the connection here. Fear not, stand firm and see the salvation of Yahweh, which he will work for you today, for the Egyptians whom you see today you shall never see again. Yahweh will fight for you and you have only to be silent. You hear the language. Be still. Be silent. Let God be God. This is the good news of the gospel.
Speaker 2:The technical term for this is what's called Christus Victor. It's that Jesus fights for us and, spoiler alert he wins. He fights for us and he wins In his cross and resurrection. Jesus conquered all of his and our enemies and don't just think enemies out there, think your own sinful flesh and the power of death in your life and the evil one who tempts and encourages you to stray. Jesus conquered all of his and our enemies, and this is the way our catechism says it.
Speaker 2:How does Christ execute the office of a king? Christ executes the office of a king in subduing us to himself, in ruling and defending us and in restraining and conquering all his and our enemies. I want Jesus to be my king. He's a way better king than I am. I want to be still and know that he is God and I am not, that he is king and I am not. That he can subdue and conquer all of his and my enemies, because I don't have to. What I get to do, I get to be still and know that he is God. I get to be silent because the Lord will fight for me.
Speaker 2:This is the encouragement of this psalm. You see, jesus in John 12 tells his disciples that his soul is troubled. It's the same word. Therefore, we will not fear, because God is a very present, help in trouble. Jesus says my soul is troubled and Jesus says Matthew's gospel says that when Jesus breathed his last, the earth broke apart. There's this real sense in which Jesus was swallowed up, overwhelmed, crushed by the waves of our sin and the judgment that we deserve, so that he could look at you and me and he could say peace, be still to your stormy souls. This is the good news.
Speaker 2:But Psalm 46 doesn't only call us to faith in Christ's finished work, but also hope in his future work. What can we expect? Also hope in his future work. What can we expect? Because right here and now. We live in the in between, with what theologians would call the already but not yet. We live in the in between, and life is hard here. We grieve, we suffer, we feel fear and anxiety and in light of that, we look to the resurrection of Jesus Christ, because the resurrection of Jesus says that the new creation has already been kicked off. We look to the day that Revelation 21 talks about, when the heavenly city, the new Jerusalem, will come down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband, and there will be a marriage at the end of all history. That's what we look to in hope, knowing that even now, in our fears, in our frailty, in our anxiety and even in our sins and our sufferings, when we grasp after being God in our lives, jesus took all of those things into himself on the cross and set us free in the resurrection and will ultimately set us free when he comes again. And so, as we be still and know that he is God, what kind of God do we come to know?
Speaker 2:Look at verses 7 and 11. They're the same thing, because it's a refrain in the psalm. It says the Lord of hosts is with us. That is the transcendent God of angel armies, somebody who has the power to make it, to change some things. The God of Jacob is our fortress, the imminent God who comes down and wrestles with his people. That's the God that we come to know, the God who is the God of angel armies and the God who will wrestle with you in your fear, in your doubt, in your troubles, in your trials. And so we end where the psalm ends Selah.
Speaker 2:Let's pray Our Father and Fortress. We confess our fear when our strength fails. We confess our anxiety when the storm surge swells. Lord Jesus, happy are all who take refuge in you. Give your strength to your servants. Holy Spirit, help us in our weakness, fill us with the gladness of your presence. In the exalted name of Jesus, we pray amen. Now is the time for us to respond. We hear from God through his word and we respond to him in prayer. We're entering into this divine dialogue you could say, and this one's gonna be a little bit different. I'm gonna walk you through, essentially, a prayer practice where we're gonna just walk through those words of Psalm 10, psalm 46, verse 10. So I'm gonna invite you, if you feel comfortable, to close your eyes, to sit straight to calm yourself and quiet yourself as these words wash over you and just enter into them in meditation. Now Be still and know that I am. Be still and know, be still, be still.
Speaker 1:Be Amen.