Word of Salvation – Vol.50 No.38 – October 2005

 

A Refuge and Strength

 

Sermon by Rev John Haverland on Psalm 46

(A Reformation Sunday Sermon)

Scripture Readings:  Romans 3:19-31

 

Congregation.

This Reformation Sunday gives us an opportunity to look back to what has happened in the past. We don’t do that merely out of historical interest or out of mere curiosity about what happened in times long ago. Rather, we look back to see what we can learn from the past that will help us here and now – in the present.

As we look back over the history of the church we can see that Solomon was right when he said that there is nothing new under the sun. Times and technology change but all through the ages people have the same character and have struggled with the same sins. The same issues come back generation after generation and the same theological controversies come back dressed up in new clothes. So there is much that we can learn from the past – from the history of the reformation and from the history of Israel.

This psalm describes a time of great crisis in Israel. It expresses Israel’s confidence in God. The first word of the psalm is “God” – God is our refuge and strength. This God is the Creator of the world and he is sovereign and all powerful and he will look after us. No matter what is going on around us, we can find our security in him.

He is the strength of his people –

in all situations,

against all enemies,

over all the earth.

In each of these three areas we will see how this applied to Israel, to the Reformation and how it applies to us.

1. First of all, God is our strength IN ALL SITUATIONS

At the time this psalm was written the people of Israel were obviously facing a great crisis. We don’t know the exact situation. It may have been the Assyrian invasion of Judah in 701 BC (2 Kings 19:35).

The turbulence of those times is pictured as a massive upheaval in nature. Two immoveable and solid masses, the earth and the mountains, are confronted by the menacing and restless sea. This is a graphic way of describing a great attack on God’s people.

Despite what was going on around them the people of Israel resolved, “we will not fear”.

They refused to give way to fear because God was their refuge. The word means a shelter. People in the Middle East sought shelter from the hot blazing sun and from storms and rain. They were confident that God would also shelter them in this crisis they were facing.

God was also a strength. The word could be translated as ‘stronghold’, ‘citadel’, ‘defence’. God is almighty and all powerful and the psalmist was confident that he would protect his people and watch over their lives. This psalm also gave great strength to believers during the Reformation.

Those, too, were turbulent times. Luther’s ideas sparked a great debate in the church and in society. It pitted kingdom against kingdom, ruler against ruler, church against church. Europe divided into areas that were defined by their religious position.

As he watched all this happening, Martin Luther wondered what he had started. He was troubled by doubts and uncertainty. Who was he, a mere monk in the church, to stand against the learned men of his time and against the tradition of the church? He felt lonely and isolated.

Yet he was confident that God was with him. He turned to this psalm and found great strength in these powerful and reassuring words. He was a very good musician and set this psalm to music. This psalm was also the basis of his most famous hymn:

A mighty fortress is our God,

a bulwark never failing.

Our helper he amidst the flood

of mortal ills prevailing.

This hymn became the battle cry of the Reformation and gave strength to thousands of Protestant believers and to many who were put to death for their faith in God and their confidence in the Scriptures.

God is still our strength today, even in our turbulent times.

Today we live in what people call, a “global village”, and we hear about what is going on all over the world. We hear of floods, earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes and fires. All this can be very unsettling for us.

In addition to all the physical turbulence of nature there is also the news of terrorism. The images of the twin towers in New York on September 11 in 2001 will remain clear in the minds of all who saw those televised pictures. We know the dangers of plane travel and the potential for terrorists to strike at any time and in any place.

But the crises of our lives don’t have to be as dramatic as these events. Many of us have enough to cope with in the daily routines of life with sickness and ill-health, trials in our families, conflict at work and disappointments in relationships.

Yet despite all that happens close at hand and far away, we can say with confidence:

God is our refuge and strength,

an ever-present help in trouble.

The word “ever-present” not only has the sense of time but of a great measure. God will be an abundant help in trouble. Many of you can testify to this from your own experience. The Lord has led you though some difficult times, but in all these God has proved to be the greatest help you could have had. He is more than enough for any and every situation. He is “an ever present help in trouble.”

2. God is not only our strength in every situation but also, secondly, AGAINST ALL OUR ENEMIES (vss 4-6)

The nation of Israel had many enemies attacking her at different times. One writer has said that Palestine was and is “a cockpit of world history”. Many armies have fought against her or in her, including the Philistines, the Syrians, the Egyptians, Moabites, Assyrians, Babylonians and the Romans. Much of that is recorded in the Bible. It has also been the subject of novels like James Michener’s book, The Source.

When Jerusalem was attacked, the enemy armies would lay siege to the city and try to starve her out or to scale the walls in a frontal assault. The city could survive a long time if she had good supplies of food and a constant supply of water. Verse 4 describes “a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the Holy Place where the Most High dwells.”

Many ancient cities had a river flowing through them or near them. Jerusalem did not have a river but it did have a spring called the Gihon. >From that spring flowed a small stream that emptied into the pool of Siloam (which is mentioned in the gospels).

The psalm uses this stream as a picture of the provision of God. The Lord looked after his people. He supplied their needs. He gave them his comfort and consolation, his goodness and grace.

Christians in the time of the Reformation also faced attacks from their enemies, but these enemies came from other sectors of the church. This was a time of great spiritual conflict with many debates about central doctrines in the Bible. Were people saved through Christ alone or through Christ and the merits of the saints? Were they saved by grace alone, through faith alone, or did their good works also contribute to their salvation? Was the Bible the only authority for faith and life or was the tradition of the church an equal authority? The Reformers insisted that we are saved by grace, through faith, on the basis of Christ’s death taught in the Bible alone.

But this spiritual conflict also became a physical conflict. Tens of thousands of protestant believers were imprisoned for their faith. Many were tortured. Many were put to death. At times there was all-out war between the Roman Catholics and the Protestants. The true church of the Lord had many enemies. But they believed that God was with them and helping them. They stated this in the confessions written during the Reformation.

The Heidelberg Catechism asks the question, “What do you believe concerning the Holy Catholic Church?” Listen to this wonderful answer: “I believe that the Son of God, through his Spirit and Word, out of the entire human race, from the beginning of the world to its end, gathers, protects and preserves for himself a community chosen for eternal life and united in true faith. And of this community I am and always will be a living member.” (Q.54)

In the Belgic Confession, Guido de Bres wrote this statement: “This holy church is preserved or supported by God against the rage of the whole world; though for a while it appears very small and in the eyes of men to be reduced to nothing.” (Art 27)

And Martin Luther expressed his confidence in the victory of the church over her enemies with these words:

And though this world with devils filled,

should threaten to undo us,

we will not fear for God has willed,

his truth to triumph through us.

The prince of darkness grim,

we tremble not for him.

His rage we can endure

for lo! his doom is sure.

One little word shall fell him.

We believe this today as we face enemies.

All of us are attacked by the temptations and assaults of Satan, the evil one. He is prowling round as a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. He especially concentrates on believers because he wants to draw us away from the light into his darkness.

We are attacked by the world around us. In our own nation we are seeing the effects of an almost complete ignorance of the Bible and the law of God. People have no standard to live by and they live according to their own values and standards. We are living in a society in a rapid state of decline.

In this secular society God is pushed to the edges of life or relegated to a small private area of our personal lives. We have even seen some of this in some of our government legislation over the past few years. There is a systematic attack on Christian values and on a biblical understanding of the family and marriage and the raising of children. Sometimes there may be a temporary victory for values consistent with Christianity in the political realm, but the overall trend is always away from God and away from his Word.

Then there is the more direct attack and persecution that comes from the people of the world. We haven’t seen too much of that in our own nation as yet, but Christians in countries like Indonesia and the Sudan are being cruelly persecuted for their faith in the Lord.

Yet, still we believe that God is with us and will provide for all we need. Today, too, we believe that God is within the church. He is with us as his people. The church “will not fall. God will help her at break of day” (vs 5).

3. Finally, God is our strength IN ALL THE EARTH

The psalmist wanted the people of Israel to look around them in the world and to see what God had done. “Come and see the works of the Lord, the desolations he has brought on the earth” (vs 8). He wanted them to think about this, to ponder who God is and what he was doing in the world. This was something they had to see with the eyes of faith. It was not directly visible. It was not something they could see then.

But they could look back in their history and see what God had done for them in the past. And they could look forward and trust that the Lord would continue to watch over them in the future.

They also believed that ultimately God would be the king over all the earth. Verse 9 assures us that God will make wars cease in the world. He will destroy all weapons of war and bring about peace on earth. This is our confidence.

Verse 10 should be read as a command ringing out in the midst of battle. This is not a half-hearted wish. This is not the Lord pleading with the nations, nor is it addressed as comfort for those who are harassed. No, it is the command of God addressed to a turbulent world! It is like the command the Lord Jesus gave to the wind and the waves on the sea of Galilee.

“Be still and know that I am God;

 

I will be exalted among the nations,

 

I will be exalted in the earth.”

The Lord God will be acknowledged in all the earth. He will be exalted.

This was also the concern of the Reformers. One of the slogans of the Reformation was the Latin phrase, Soli Deo Gloria. To God alone be the glory! This was their great concern, their goal, their aim – that God be exalted in all the earth.

In Luther’s rendering of Psalm 46, he wrote, “Be still for he is Lord, by all the earth adored”. This must be our great concern today: That God be exalted. That he be glorified and praised in all the earth. At present we do not see everything subject to Jesus and we do not see every knee bowed before him. But through faith we put our confidence in God. We believe that “The Lord Almighty is with us.”

A little girl knelt by her bed one evening and prayed, “God, bless my mummy and daddy, my brothers and sisters and all my friends. And now, God, please take care of yourself, because if anything happened to you we’d be in trouble”!

We need not fear that anything will happen to God because he is almighty – he is all powerful. That is the repeated refrain of this psalm and it is emphasised again at the end. “The Lord almighty is with us, the God of Jacob is our fortress.”

The Lord Almighty is also the “God of Jacob”. He made a promise to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob – an agreement, a covenant – I will be God to you and to your descendants after you.

We are even more aware of this than those Old Testament believers because we live in this New Testament age after Jesus came. He came as Emmanuel, “God with Us”. Through his Spirit Jesus lives in you who believe and is with you. This is what he has promised: “And surely I am with you always, even to the very end of the age” (Mt 28:20).

Today we have looked back in history to the Old Testament period and Israel’s confidence in God. We have looked back to the time of the Reformation and to the strength the believers then found in God. Their God is our God and he is our help and strength also today.

Luther expressed that in words we still sing today:

Did we in our own strength confide,

our striving would be losing.

Were not the right Man on our side,

the man of God’s own choosing.

Dost ask who that may be?

Christ Jesus, it is He;

Lord Sabaoth His Name,

from age to age the same,

and He must win the battle.

So we say:

God is our refuge and strength,

an ever-present help in trouble.

The Lord almighty is with us,

The God of Jacob is our fortress.

Amen.