Peace In Troubled Times

Transcript

Behold the works of the Lord, how he has brought desolations on the earth. He makes wars cease to the ends 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

— Psalm 46

(ESV)

. Let’s pray together.

Father, we pray this morning that we would taste and see that the Lord is good. We thank you that the word is a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path, that it is sweeter than honey, that it is more precious than gold. So, Father, would you attend your word this morning? Would your Holy Spirit come? We thank you that your word is powerful and active and living and sharper than any two-edged sword. So, Father, we pray that the word would affect us this morning, that it would encourage us, that it would challenge us, that it would comfort us. We pray this in Jesus’ name, amen. The longer you live, the more you realize that turmoil, trouble, suffering, and fear in people’s lives is not the exception, but rather the norm. The Bible never minimizes this reality, but it does come to our aid in the midst of it.

When Life Falls Apart

I remember a particularly troublesome time for our family. It was when my mom was in a bicycle accident in August of 2012. Hannah and I, my wife, were planning on heading into Chicago for a friend’s wedding. She was supposed to come over and watch our two kids. We only had two kids at the time. And usually, she’s pretty timely, but she was 30 minutes late, and we started to wonder what was going on. So we called my dad, and we said, hey, do you know where mom is? She was supposed to come take the kids. We were going to Chicago. We’re not in a big rush, but do you know where she is? And my dad was sitting there, I think, not thinking about much, and he said, I have no idea where she is. She’s supposed to be at your house. She left two hours ago to go to the bank,

and I haven’t seen her since then. So he started to get worried. So he jumped out in the car, drove around the neighborhood, saw a cop car with her bike in the back, followed the cop car to his house, and said, where’s my wife? And he said, you all need to rush to the hospital. She’s fallen off her bike, and I don’t have any other details at this point. So my dad called us, and he said, you gotta get to the hospital. We don’t know what’s happening. We’ve gotta go now. And so we all drove to the hospital. We went, I don’t know if you’ve been in this situation, but we went to one of those side rooms. The doctor came in. We hadn’t seen her yet, and we just said, what’s happening? And the doctor looked at us, and he said, we don’t know what’s gonna happen.

It looks really bad right now. Well, I can’t tell you much. What I can tell you is that it’s bad enough that we don’t know if she’s gonna make it, but she could also come through, or she could come through, and she could be a vegetable for the rest of her life. They ended up having to go in and do surgery on her brain, and to release the pressure, the swelling. And after a few hours, they assured us she would live. But they still didn’t know what kind of life she would live. And during this time, it felt like our life was just a box that had been turned upside down.

Her future, our future, everything was up in the air. It felt like the mountains were crashing into the sea, and we couldn’t see, just even a day forward, what it would look like. Thankfully, my mom came through, and she’s almost fully recovered. And I’m sure for many of you, you’ve had similar life situations. Maybe you’re even going through that right now. Maybe you’ve had someone close to you who didn’t make it. Maybe one of your parents is not doing well. Maybe you just found out that you yourself, or a friend, has a spot on your skin that doesn’t look good. Maybe you just found out that you will lose your job at the end of the month, and you don’t know what you’re gonna do. For others, these times of darkness don’t come as this big apocalyptic event, but it’s more a constant drip in our lives.

Maybe it’s the relationship you have with a spouse, or a sibling that is strained. Maybe you feel physical pain every day, and it just wears you down. Maybe you feel like you’re called to do something else in work, but you really can’t find another job. And it’s just every day you have to get up and go and do something that you really don’t want to do.

Maybe you’re under financial stress, or suffering from anxiety and depression. And when these times come, we all have certain tendencies. Pain, fear, and suffering has a way of squeezing the truth out of us. What do we value? To whom will we turn? There’s something about these chaotic times of disorder that reveals what is really in us. Well, no matter where you are this morning, whatever situation you’re in, this Psalm, Psalm 46, comes and speaks to all of us. Whether we’re in the midst of it, or whether we’re preparing for that time to come. And this Psalm, it doesn’t minimize these issues. It doesn’t reject that there’s evil in this world, and it doesn’t deny that life will be hard. No, this Psalm comes and stands beside us in the midst of it. It confronts us with the reality of life, not airbrushing it, not doctoring it away,

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God Our Refuge

saying it’s real, but there’s something more that you need to know. It recognizes that every life is going to be filled with fear, with turmoil, with suffering, but then it gives us hope in the midst of it. So the Psalm is broken into three stanzas, and we’re gonna look at these three stanzas, and I’ll just give you these up front in case you take notes. Verses one through three tell us that God is our protection, therefore we don’t need to fear. Verses one through three tell us God is our protection, therefore we don’t need to fear. Verses four through seven tell us God is with us, therefore we will not be moved. And verses eight through 11 tell us that God fights for us, therefore all we need to do is be still. So verses one through three, the Psalm begins in verses one through three

by describing a great storm. The earth is falling apart. The mountains are moving. The waters are roaring and foaming. The mountains are trembling and even falling into the sea. The picture the psalmist paints for us is a terrible, earth-shaking, mountain-shattering event. All life is upended. Mountains are symbolic for all that is stable, and even they are crashing into the sea. And what the psalmist is doing here is he’s using this metaphor for times of trouble, and you see that in verse one. In verse one he says, God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. And the purpose of these metaphors is to make something abstract more concrete. That’s what metaphors do, right? So you have times of trouble in the abstract, and then you go to the concrete of this great storm. But here’s the problem. For most of us in the modern day,

this imagery does not really hit us as it should. The imagery was more powerful for most of human history because they were exposed to the elements of nature. We have very different conceptions of nature. When I say nature in the Pacific Northwest, what do you think of? You think of conservation. That’s the first thing that comes to your mind. But most people through human history, nature was something to be survived. Nature was something uncontrollable, something with great and unharnessed power. Two weeks ago, I spent six days on the Colorado River floating down on a raft. We all had our UPF shirts on, our water shoes. I was putting on sunscreen like every hour, right? To make sure I didn’t get burned. We wore those like nerdy little sun hats. Even for you avid outdoors people, you probably spend more time in REI before you go camping

than actually camping itself. The point is, we really prepare to go out into nature, right? Because nature is going to attack you in ways that sometimes you can’t even foresee. One night I was just sleeping out there on a cot and it just started pouring. And I was just like, okay, what do I do now? We’re just sleeping out here and it’s just pouring rain on us. If you’ve ever spent time outside in the cold without protection, this is what he’s describing here. Have you ever been in the ocean, in the waves where it picked you up like a toothpick and slammed you down and you thought, nature doesn’t care about me at this point. It’s just doing whatever it wants. And this is the imagery that the psalmists use. And the shocking thing is that the psalmist is actually serene in the midst of the storm.

Because as verse one describes it, God is his refuge and his strength, his very present help in times of trouble. What does it mean that God is our refuge? In the midst of the storm, he is our shelter, he is our protection, he is our sanctuary, he is our haven, he is our shelter in the hurricane, he is our booth for shade in the day of heat, and he is our very present help. He is not someone we have to go find. No, he is near to us when the storms of life come. So if verse one gives us assurance that God is our protector in the midst of this storm, in the midst of times of trouble, then verse two tells us how we should respond. Therefore, we will not fear because God is near us,

because he is our protection in the midst of these tribulations, in the midst of the storm. We stand in the middle of the storm on the solid rock of the God Almighty, don’t we? God is our protector, therefore, we do not need to be afraid. Though the world comes to its worst, though you hear the worst news that you’ve ever heard this afternoon, God is with you. God is your refuge and your strength. Though the Andes and the Alps tremble and fall into the sea, God is with you. So I wonder, what storm are you going through right now? What times of trouble, what are you fearing? In John 16, 33, Jesus tells us that in this world we will have tribulation. You can expect it, you can count on it, that tribulation will come. Maybe right now you’re worried about the future because you don’t know what is coming next

and it feels like the earth is giving away under your feet. Maybe you’re frustrated because you’ve been waiting and waiting and waiting for God to answer your prayers about a spouse or a child or a job and it feels like God is stiff-arming you, he’s not answering you. Or maybe you feel like no one understands you and no one cares for you and you really have no friends and you feel like God is not a very present help but he is far away from you. Or maybe someone in your family is on the brink of death or you are in financial trouble. Psalm 46 reminds us that it’s precisely in these times that God stands as your haven. He stands to protect you, therefore you do not need to fear.

And we all need to remember that it is God who is our refuge because we can forget that it is he that stands as our protection because when the times get tough, our tendency is to turn to other things for our refuge. We take refuge in other good things like parents, friends, spouses, kids, or we take refuge in the weekends, the holidays that we get because the job is so dull. We live for Saturday and Sunday or we worry so we take shelter in our bank account or 401k or we occupy our time with distractions. We look for meaning in other people’s opinion of us on our phone and we find refuge in that. Or we can take refuge in food and alcohol and sex and drugs but the psalmist says God is our refuge in the midst of the storm and God is a far better refuge

than all these other things. All other refuges are lies and when the storm comes, they will be swept away and you will be standing naked and exposed before him who created you. So we have to ask ourselves, what are you taking refuge in? Because if you stand under the shelter of God, you will never be moved. Though the worst storm in your life comes, you will not be moved because God created each storm that comes into your life.

God With Us

Therefore, if you are hiding in God, if you are covered in the shadow of his wings, you have no reason to fear. I only quoted part of John 16, 33 earlier. Jesus actually says to his disciples in that whole verse, he says,

I have told you these things so that in me you may have peace. In this world, you will have trouble but take heart. I have overcome the world

— John 16

(ESV)

. So he puts this tribulation saying, I’ve told you these things so that you may have peace. I’ve overcome the world, take refuge in me. The scriptures promise that we will have times of trouble, but they also come to our aid in the midst of them. God is our refuge, therefore, we don’t need to fear. So verses one through three describe God as our protection, therefore, we do not need to fear. Then verses four through seven go on to describe God

as being with us, therefore, we will not be moved or some translations say, we will not fall. In many ways, verses four through seven, it’s the same point but with different imagery. Here, the people of God are described as in a city that is under attack from foreign enemies. As we see in verse six, the nations are in an uproar, the kingdoms totter and fall. We need to remember again that this language would have brought up very real imagery for most living in this time. I imagine that most who lived in Israel this time saw wars come to their cities. And it’s not a pretty sight. Starvation, death, torture, slavery. As you see the army approaching, whether it’s Egypt, Babylon, Assyria, these large nations are coming for Israel. And when they come for you, you would tremble. You would tremble. When a foreign nation came knocking at the door,

fear and trembling must have stirred in their hearts. When a city is under siege, the first thing that the enemy cuts off is what? Water, right? But the psalmist paints a picture here of a river that brings life and vitality and it flows through the city. Verses five through six go on to speak about the confidence the people of God have because God is in the midst of the city. The water provides life and the water is a symbol of God’s presence with them. Therefore, the people of God will not be moved. Though the nations rage, though kingdoms totter, though an enemy camp outside your doorstep, the Lord of armies, the Lord of hosts is with them. And notice what the verses say. They say that the strength of God’s people is not found in their walls, not in their fortifications. No, it’s found in their ever-present God who is with them.

So we need to ask ourselves again, what battle are you fighting right now? What army is camping outside your door, ready to pounce? And do you believe that God is with you in these times? Or do you think, as the army approaches, that he has forsaken you? Maybe you are thinking, well, I don’t really have any enemies. I live in suburban Portland or downtown Portland and my neighbors mow their grass and wave high at me. I don’t have any enemies that are coming for me. I don’t understand how this imagery helps me. Well, you’re right in one sense. In some sense, you don’t have any enemies here in Portland and you’re wrong in another very deadly sense because Martin Luther rightly took our enemy in this psalm as the devil himself. His song, A Mighty Fortress, this is what he says. For still our ancient foe doth seek to work us woe,

his craft and power are great and armed with cruel hate. If you are a Christian and you think that you don’t have enemies coming at you every day, then you make yourself an easy prey. For the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. He’s looking around to see who’s not protected. He’s looking for people to consume and destroy. Our fight is not against flesh and blood but against the powers of darkness that wage war against us. And you in one sense should fear. You should fear because as Luther said, they’re armed with cruel hate and they will conquer you if God is not on your side. You are fighting a spiritual battle and they are coming over the hill with their weapons pointed at you though you cannot see them. And they are seeking to destroy you. And you can lock up your gates,

you can separate from the world, you can shut your ears, you can leave your church, you can run away but there’s only one who can stop them. The psalmist says you won’t fall. It’s not because you’re so smart and have things figured out. It’s not because you have such good theology. It’s not because you’ve been a Christian for so long. It’s not because you’re a pretty good person. No, you won’t be moved, you won’t fall because God is there when the morning dawns. Each day as the sun rises, God is there for you. So each day is going to bring new tribulation, new suffering and as you see the sun, you need to be reminded that as the sun rises, so God is with me. It reminds me of the scene in the two towers, Lord of the Rings, another nerdy reference. When Gandalf, right, at the end of that second movie,

he comes at the Battle of Helm’s Deep, he comes charging down that hill with the light and I’ve always gotten chills at that scene, I think because it’s this image of this psalm where the battle, we’re losing the battle. Everything is going wrong and then the sun rises and Gandalf comes over that hill and he charges down and rescues them and that is what the Lord does for us. As the morning dawns, he comes to our rescue. He is with us in the midst of the city. God delights in showing up when we need him the most. Remember in verses one through three that there’s this tumultuous waters that are swaying and roaring and foaming but here, what are the waters doing? They’re calm. They go through the city of God. God not only does not forsake you in your times of trouble, he turns the waves of your life,

the armies coming against you into streams that are life-giving. He takes those waves and he says, drink from these. This is where I am for you. Trinity Church, listen to me. Hidden in deep wounds are future callings. Hidden in deep wounds are future callings. Your suffering and tribulation are precisely where God wants to meet you. This psalm is not simply to be preached about, not simply to be read. It is meant to give comfort and confidence to your soul when everything seems to be falling apart. You’re to fall down in tears over this psalm and say, God is with me even though it doesn’t feel like it right now because the armies are coming and this storm is coming. Find your comfort and confidence in God alone, in God alone. So we have seen in the psalm how God is our protector in this storm.

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God Fights For Us

Therefore, we do not need to fear, verses one through three. We have seen how he is with us in the midst of battle. Therefore, we will not fall. And finally, the best stanza in verses eight through 11, the psalmist speaks about how God fights for us. He ends all wars and therefore, we need not to act but to be still and know that he is God. If the first and second stanza are about us in the midst of this battle, in the midst of this storm, then this third stanza is different. It’s different because now we’re going up to look and see what he has done. We’re going up to look, come up, come up to the walls and see what the Lord has accomplished. See what God has done. See what God has done. Verse eight begins with a call. Come, come, behold what the Lord has done.

And what do we see? Verses eight and nine tell us. He has brought desolations on the earth. He makes wars cease to the ends of the earth. He breaks the bow and shatters the spear. He burns the chariots with fire. As we look out over the field with the psalmist, what do we see? God has fought the battle for us. He has conducted the war to end all wars. Across the plain lies our enemy dead, scattered on the ground in heaps. He has brought peace. He has protected his people. He has been their fortress and their refuge. So what do we do? What do we do? And verse 10 tells us. It’s obvious. We don’t need to act. We don’t need to fight. The battle is over. It’s done for. We need to be still and know that he is God. He will be exalted among the nations.

He will be exalted on the earth. In the midst of our fear, in the midst of our tribulation, our tendency is to try to fix things. We wanna fix the problem. I will fight this sin and conquer it. I will fix this situation. I’m gonna try harder. I’m gonna be more effective. I’m gonna pull myself out of this depression. But the psalmist says, stop, stop. You cannot fight this battle. You will lose. We don’t need to act. We need to be still and look at what God has done for us. To watch the salvation that God has worked for us. You wanna fight the spiritual forces of darkness? You can only fight them if God is fighting for you. And this is exactly the stories we read in the Old Testament, right? So just two examples. In Exodus 14, the people have just left Egypt,

the people of Israel, and they’re at the edge of the Red Sea and the Egyptians are coming to destroy them. The storm is raging. The armies are closing in. And the people say to Moses, is it because there are no graves in Egypt that you have taken us away to die in this wilderness? What have you done to us in bringing us out of Egypt? They complain in fear, but what does Moses say? In verse 13,

fear not. Stand firm and see the salvation of the Lord which he will work for you today. For the Egyptians who you see today, you will never see again. The Lord will fight for you. You only have to be silent

— Exodus 14

(ESV)

. The Lord will fight for you. You only have to be silent. You can’t fight them. Watch the salvation that the Lord will work for you. Be still and know that I am God.

See how he makes wars cease. See how he breaks the bow and shatters the spear. Be still and know that he is God. Another story, 2 Chronicles 20. The armies, I love this story. The armies come against Jehoshaphat for battle and Jehoshaphat is afraid. He doesn’t know what to do, but he set his face to seek the Lord. And he said,

oh our God, will you not execute judgment on them? For we are powerless. We are powerless against this great horde that is coming against us. We do not know what to do, but our eyes are on you

— 2 Chronicles 20

(ESV)

. We don’t know what to do, but our eyes are on you. And the spirit of the Lord came upon Jehoshaphat and he said to the people, listen, this is what the Lord says to you. Do not be afraid. Do not be dismayed at this great horde

for the battle is not yours, but God’s. The battle is God’s. He will conquer. You don’t need to fight this battle. When you don’t know what to do, turn your eyes upon him. The Psalm in the same way closes with a call to look at what the Lord has done. The battle is the Lord’s, not yours. Look out over the battlefield. Be still and know that he is God. And as we stand, if we go up on this wall, on this side of the cross, what do we see? What do we see? Come, behold what the Lord has done. This is in the Old Testament. Now we have on this side of Jesus and what do we see? We see our King who took on the storm. He refused to be covered under the refuge of God and walked out in the storm for us

and let it sweep him away. He let the waves engulf him. He let the falling mountains crash upon him. He was swept up in the storm on our behalf. We see the man, Christ Jesus, who walked out of the city as the true King and locked the gates behind him so that no one could get in. And he let the armies of darkness pierce him for our sake. He refused the water that was rightfully his and let his breath expire. He let them conquer him with cruel hate. And when we look at and we see, we see our enemies surrounding Jesus rejoicing. They’ve won. They think they’ve won. They’ve slashed his side. We see him bound to the tree, bleeding, and we deserve to be out there. But he took the wrath of the powers of the darkness upon himself. But we must look again for what do we see?

He’s gone. They think their greatest victory is conquering him, but he rises from the dead. He fights the battle for us by going out and being conquered for our sake. And he, the Lord of armies, the Lord of hosts, the Lord of battle, will come back with great wrath and fury and persecute and conquer all of those who mistreat his people. The sword will come from his mouth and lay all of God’s enemies low. He will be exalted among the nations. He will be exalted on the earth. So what do we do when the storms come, when the armies begin knocking on our doors, when everything in our life begins to fall apart? Come. Come. Behold what the Lord has done. Take refuge in God. Stand on the wall and look to Christ and know that he is God. We rest in the shadow of his wings

Be Not Afraid

because he is our protector. He is with us. He fights to us, for us. This psalm comes to us in our pain, in our fear, in our distress and says, come, look to Jesus. Look to God Almighty. If you find refuge in these other things, they will be swept away. But if you find refuge in God himself, you will stand forever. I know some of the troubles you all are going through and I don’t know some of the other troubles you all are going through. What I do know is that in this life, we will all have tribulation. And the point of this psalm is to bring great confidence and comfort in our God, who is our refuge, our strength, our very present help. There’s a story of John Wesley, who is a famous Methodist preacher from the 18th century. Wesley was a powerful preacher

who started a revival in the United Kingdom, bringing tens of thousands of people to Christ through his ministry. And the story goes like this. Wesley is on his deathbed and he can barely speak, though he often attempted to as any preacher would. At last, with all his strength, he cried out, and these were his last words. The best of all is, God is with us. Again, raising his hand and waving in triumph, he exclaimed with thrilling effect, the best of all is, God is with us. These were the last words of Wesley as he characterized his life. God had been with him through his early childhood, guided him through his life, and now as he was entering the valley of the shadow of death, the same hand that had guided him was sustaining him through it. The God who knows you intimately, who made the end from the beginning,

has said through Jesus Christ, I will always be with you. I will always protect you. I am the Lord of hosts. I have fought your battle for you. You have nothing to fear, nothing. Not pain, not loss, not wars, not disappointment, nothing. As Marilyn Robinson has said, fear is not a Christian habit of mind. Fear drives panic, but we ought not to be an anxious people. Our God has told us again and again, be not afraid, be not afraid, because the King is alive and seated on his throne. Christians are not a panicked people. They’re not a frightened flock. They’re not an alarmed assembly. Rather, we are a calm community. We are a peace-filled people because we are children of the King, and our God is with us. God is our refuge. God is our strength. He is our ever-present help in times of trouble.

Therefore, we will not fear. We will not fear. The Lord of hosts is with us. The God of Jacob is our fortress. Find your confidence in him and in him alone. He is your refuge. Let us pray. Father, we do thank you that you have promised to be our refuge, that you have provided Jesus Christ as our very present help.

We thank you that Jesus is our strength, that he is our hope, that he is our song. And so now, Father, we pray. We pray as we go through tribulation and turmoil and suffering and pain and suffering and turmoil and suffering and pain and fear, we pray that we would recognize that you are with us, that you stand beside us.

We thank you that your word comforts us in the midst of our affliction. And we pray all of these things in the name of Jesus, amen.