Word of Salvation – Vol. 30 No. 48 – Dec 1985
Be Still And Know That I Am God
Sermon by Rev. A. I. de Graaf on Psalm 46:8-11
(Suitable for New Year’s Day)
Readings: Psalm 91, Acts 4:18-31, Psalm 46
Songs: 219: 1,2,3; 219: 4,5,6,7; 337; 374: 1,3; 280: 1,2; 280:3
Isn’t it amazing what a lot of noise people usually make when a new year starts?
Fire-works… car horns… ships’ whistles… fog-horns… and loud shouts, Yippee and Yahoo and what have you.
Why do we do that?
Because we are scared in the dark?
To chase away the evil spirits that especially want to pounce when a moment of change-over, we’re more vulnerable…?
Or is it perhaps because we want to camouflage away our feeling of helplessness: We talk loudly of plans, of new resolutions, of projects and prospects, but deep down we wonder: What will come of it all?
Now amidst all that noise there comes to us here (this morning) the call of God and God says: Shush! Be still!
Put your hand on your mouth
and let your anxious hearts be quiet,
Then you will find out who I am and HOW CLOSE I am!
…and how can you face ANYTHING without finding THAT out?
Shush… He says – be still!
…and that in this psalm which is so full of things happening so full of turmoil and tumult.
But right here He says:
Shush – start now, little one,
by listening to and looking at what I have been doing
and am doing still.
You, with your running to and fro,
with your hustle and bustle..
your… how does The Preacher call it?
– your CHASING AFTER WIND!
If you shall be able to do worthwhile things
(and God has many worthwhile things to do for His children,
for His office-bearers in the world,
His prophets, priests and kings and that’s all of you).
If you shall be able to do worthwhile things – also in the ’80’s
then you will first have to look and listen,
flabbergasted and astonished,
look and listen, humble and moved and deeply grateful,
to what The Lord did… and still does.
He is a Refuge, a Fortress as this Psalm says
but not in a stone / concrete, static way.
He is the God of Jacob,
(the God of little cheats like Jacob was),
appearing to him in a dream
when fleeing away through strange hostile lands.
And wrestling with him by the brook-side.
This is the God of history,
who makes the history of this world into the history of His salvation.
The year 1986 is another Year of Our Lord
and nothing will happen in it to you that this Lord
has not planned and reckoned good for you.
But wider is the perspective,
for this Lord, this God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is
– says the Psalm –
THE GOD WHO BRINGS DESOLATIONS TO THE EARTH.
If you were an Israelite reading this psalm
when it was written
you would have heard in it what God had done
to Pharaoh of Egypt to let His people go.
Desolations all right… Hail and storm and locusts
and sickness and death
and the raging waters of a sea.
But the sons of Korah, who wrote this psalm,
also must have thought of their fore-father Korah,
who rebelled against God’s servant Moses
and God opened the earth under them
and it swallowed the rebels up, lock, stock & barrel.
Later there was the way God first used King Nebuchadnezzar
to teach faithless Jerusalem the lesson
that the Most High could NOT be taken for granted.
And yet when this Nebuchadnezzar became too big for his boots
then God reduced him for seven years
to the status of a beast in the field.
But look at our own time.
God sent into Germany, to judge them,
and into Once-Christian Europe to judge IT,
the monster called Adolf Hitler.
But when this monster thought that he could rise up
against the people of the Most High with impunity,
he ended his life in ignominy
and even his grave cannot be found.
The GOD who works desolation in the earth!
Whoever has eyes and ears can see also in the past decade,
the deeds of the LORD who works desolation in the earth.
Whatever thinks it can rise up against God most high must fall.
Idols lie shattered now, money is one of them.
BUT AS WE ARE STILL BEFORE THE FACE OF A HOLY GOD
WE LOOK ESPECIALLY AT HIS GREAT DEEDS IN CHRIST JESUS
IN WHOM GOD HAS TAKEN FROM SATAN HIS POWER
AND FROM DEATH ITS STING!
The great war has ended for God’s child.
God has stopped it: by defeating the foe,
forever stripping the Evil One of his claims over us.
We could do nothing about that.
All we could do and can do is to… be still and see God do it.
Be still and know how HE IS GOD.
And then this God, whose holiness would have had to demand the everlasting death of every last one of us, by sending His dear Son into the desolation of hell, has for us, through the blood of His cross, made peace for ever.
And because that happened, all swords one Day will be beaten into ploughshares.
That peace will not come through evolution,
or through men somehow getting a better Social Consciousness.
We do not let those wars cease,
we always start new ones.
No, look at the deeds of the LORD,
HE is The Peace-Maker.
And with That peace through Christ’s death it all becomes possible.
BUT AGAIN, IF YOU SHALL HAVE PART IN IT,
IN THIS PEACE OF GOD
(ONE DAY TO BE PEACE ON ALL THE EARTH),
THEN THE CONDITION FOR YOU NOW IS:
TO BE STILL AND KNOW, ACKNOWLEDGE! THAT HE IS GOD.
I will be exalted among the nations, He says.
I will be exalted in the earth.
That’s not a thin, pious hope.
That is a promise and an assurance of Him who has never lied.
He is the Sovereign one, He will make sure.
He is not begging and beseeching us to please exalt Him in the world for otherwise (poor God!) nobody will do it.
I WILL BE EXALTED says the sovereign Lord.
The question is: will you be there to rejoice and cheer
when this will become evident to all men.
Or will you be among those who ignored this Lord
and trampled His will underfoot,
and who will THEN cry out:
“Mountains fall upon us and hills cover us from the face of Him
who, after all, DOES sit on the throne,
and from the Lamb, who then will prove to be the Lion….”?
God will be exalted.
Many things may not be sure about the future, but this thing is:
God will be exalted in this earth of His.
If you and I will be still before Him and LET HIM BE GOD,
we will learn to long for that day.
If you and I will come off our ridiculous little thrones
and will stop kicking our ridiculous little feet towards the heavens
quarrelling with God as if He were at OUR beck and call,
then this same God will teach us the glory and the beauty of this
“I will be exalted among the nations,
I will be exalted in the earth.’
Jesus arose from the dead
and those that are His will arise after Him.
And this world is going to make us see things that are so staggering
that we cannot find words for it.
And from the lips of all God’s children THEN there will be the song:
“My God How Great Thou Art.”
It will defy all imagination
not only in greatness and majesty
but also in tenderness and unspeakable beauty.
I will be exalted… you can count on it… says He.
And because we know that that is coming, we may work on.
We may know that our labour FOR HIM shall not be in vain.
Therefore we may know the JOY of work and even cross-bearing.
Nothing of it will be for nothing:
“I will be exalted in it,” says God, “among the nations.”
You can be sure of it.
“I will be exalted even by you here, in this earth.’
But throughout it all we will have to keep remembering:
HE is God … He made us, not we Him.
Be still and know that I am God!
Who are we that we can TELL HIM what He must do for us?
We may ASK Him anything… ANY thing!
But as we do so, we had better not forget Who He IS.
He’s no tame Lion.
And we thought we could write Him off for this century…
write Him off as irrelevant..?
There is peace and security for us when we with our children GO HIS WAY.
Obediently.
Even when that way would appear to lead through the dark shadowy valleys.
Even then it is a way where He can give and will give peace and joy.
The miracle of experiencing that
comes from what the psalm says again at the end:
NOT THAT WE ARE WITH GOD
which would be a just enough demand
but we disabled ourselves from doing that –
NOT THAT WE STICK TO GOD,
but that He is with US, that He sticks to US.
He became the Emmanuel
whose greatest deed on earth
became sharing our life in human form,
until THUS He had become
the first-born among them that shall live for ever.
Our Fortress is the God not of nice Israel but of cheater Jacob.
Our Fortress is the God Who saves and makes clean the crook, the sinner.
So He sends us into this new year singing His song, not your own.
It looks as if He sends us into it as sheep among the wolves.
Yes, He told us that, too.
Yet in that way the world shall be put to shame.
For these sheep-like little ones, who learned to be still knowing HE is God,
will find out that HE IS GOD,
the LORD of lords and the KING of kings.
More than conquerors they will be,
these strange sheep among these wolves.
Because this world is the world God loved.
This world is the world where He did those mighty things.
This time, of which 1986 is a part, is HIS time. Not the devil’s.
In this world the cross has stood.
And here in this earth God was exalted by Jesus’ open grave.
So the song we sing is HIS song.
And the story we tell is HIS story.
Till our faith becomes sight,
and every knee shall bow and all tongues confess
that Jesus Christ IS Lord
to the glory of God the Father. Amen.