“'A Very Present Help in Trouble': Hope in God's Help (Psalm 46)” | 10/11/2020
Psalm 46| 10/11/20 | Will Duval
It’s good to be back with you! I want to thank Pastor Thad once again for filling in for me last Sunday, esp on such short notice. My annual seasonal cold that I succumb to every fall when the weather starts to change, of course struck right on Friday night / Saturday morning, and any other year, I wouldn’t have thought twice about being in church. But more for your MENTAL health than for your physical safety, I decided I better stay home, and await confirmation of my negative COVID test; if I’d been coughing every 30 seconds up here in the pulpit in this COVID climate, it would have distracted from what the Lord wants to say to us here in Psalm 46.
But that means we get to cover it this morning, together: Psalm 46. We are now officially HALFWAY through our sermon series - “Psalms of Hope” - that will take us, God willing, all the way to Advent. We have studied Psalm 13: ““‘How Long, O Lord’: Hope in God’s Listening Ear””, Psalm 23: ““‘The Lord is My Shepherd’: Hope in God’s Care””, Psalm 27: ““‘Whom Shall I Fear’: Hope in God’s Protection””, Psalm 30: ““‘Mourning into Dancing’: Hope in God’s Redemption””, Psalm 31: ““‘In You I Take Refuge’: Hope in God’s Deliverance””, Psalm 33: ““‘Our Heart is Glad in Him': Hope in God's Goodness’””, Psalms 42-43: ““‘I Shall Again Praise Him': Hope in God's Faithfulness””, and Psalm 73: “‘Whom have I in heaven but you?’: Hope in God’s World”, and this morning we’re studying Psalm 46: ““‘A Very Present Help in Trouble': Hope in God's HELP””.
HELP! I need somebody…
HELP! Not just anybody…
HELP! You know I need someone:
[sing] “Help…”
I suspect whether you’re 9 years old or you’re 90, you are familiar with that popular Beatles tune. The song transcends generations because its LYRICS are so universally applicable. From birth to death, we all live in perpetual need of HELP. I’ve of course been reminded of that especially these past 6 months, as Polly and I have had to relearn how to parent a newborn. Parenting a newborn is basically like working in the trauma section of the E.R.: your job is just to try and keep everyone ALIVE. That’s the bar for success. And babies will do everything in their power to test you on it. I’m giving Elijah a bath this week; I literally turn around to pick up his towel, and he’s face-down in the bathwater. Why are babies so intent on hurting themselves? I set him in the middle of the living room. It’s all carpet; no stairs. He can’t even crawl yet; completely baby-proof, right? I go back to cleaning dishes, glance in from the kitchen to check on him 90 seconds later, and he has managed to roll over to the corner of the room and find the one electrical outlet baby-proofing PLUG - that little plastic cap that’s ironically supposed to go in the socket to keep him safe - I must have taken it out to plug in a cord and left it lying on the ground and now he’s found it and he’s trying his very hardest to swallow it before I find out and come save his life.
(Please don’t call CPS on your pastor! I just thank God his adoption was finalized 2 weeks ago, or I couldn’t share these stories; they’d never let us keep him!) But this parenting, isn’t it? From wiping booties & kissing boo-boos to offering dating advice & borrowing the car - our kids seem to constantly need our HELP. And God KNOWS that WE need His help in parenting them!
And God has a funny way of bringing it all full circle at the END of life as well, doesn’t he? Our utter dependence on others. I officiated Mary Ann Mansker’s funeral yesterday. She went home to be with the Lord after 91 ½ years, the last year of which was spent battling lymphoma. And her daughter Debie, who also worships with us and was Mary Ann’s primary caregiver for those last few weeks of her in-home hospice, Debie can personally attest to the fact that for everyone who lives long enough, we will end up just like we started: barely able to move, in diapers, desperately dependent on others for our very survival. From the womb to the tomb, we need HELP!
And John Lennon might have THOUGHT that “when i was younger, so much younger than today; I never needed anybody’s help in any way”, right? Those foolish, youthful years of prideful presumed independence; when we don’t THINK we need anyone for anything. “I got this on my own!” Some of us NEVER outgrow that, do we? Our prideful impulse, to reject any and all help. I get on to Ellery, our 4 year old, when we play games together and she won’t let me help her shuffle the playing cards:
“Baby, it’s really difficult, for a 4 year old to shuffle; can I help you?
NO Daddy, I want to do it myself!”
But the reality is: we’re no different, as adults, are we? When the babysitter cancels on you last minute, and you don’t want to have to reach out to the neighbors, and admit that you actually need their help… when life throws you more than you can handle on your own - you lose your job, you lose a loved one, you move cities, away from your support system - what’s our natural inclination? Do we run to God for help? Or in our pride, do we declare, “NO Daddy, I want to do it myself!” God: I got this.
But God, in his GRACE, has a wonderful way of breaking us of that pride, doesn’t he? Of humbling us, by whatever means necessary. Heck, he’ll send a pandemic to wreak havoc on the entire world, just to wake us UP to the reality of our desperate need for help. To the fact that we really DON’T “got it” under control, that we really DON’T have it all together. But that’s okay, because GOD has things under control; He “upholds the universe by the word of his power” - Hebrews 1:3. And that same Sovereign, totally in-control God has promised, right here in Psalm 46, to be for us, for ALL who would repent of our pride and turn to Him for aid: “a very present[b] help in trouble.”
Would you stand with me…Psalm 46: (if you don’t have a Bible...)
God is our refuge and strength,
a very present[b] help in trouble.
2 Therefore we will not fear though the earth gives way,
though the mountains be moved into the heart of the sea,
3 though its waters roar and foam,
though the mountains tremble at its swelling. Selah
4 There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God,
the holy habitation of the Most High.
5 God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved;
God will help her when morning dawns.
6 The nations rage, the kingdoms totter;
he utters his voice, the earth melts.
7 The Lord of hosts is with us;
the God of Jacob is our fortress. Selah
8 Come, behold the works of the Lord,
how he has brought desolations on the earth.
9 He makes wars cease to the end of the earth;
he breaks the bow and shatters the spear;
he burns the chariots with fire.
10 “Be still, and know that I am God.
I will be exalted among the nations,
I will be exalted in the earth!”
11 The Lord of hosts is with us;
the God of Jacob is our fortress. Selah
This is the word of the Lord... (LET’S PRAY…)
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We have examined psalms of LAMENT… psalms of ADORATION… I’m gonna categorize Ps 46 this morning as a psalm of TAUNT. Psalm 46 was basically written as a shout of triumph, to be sung after victory in battle. We’re not exactly sure WHICH battle - which occasion of Jerusalem, the “city of God” referenced in v4, being defended by God provided the immediate context for Psalm 46; there are two main theories (Boice, 390-1):
The first is “The destruction of the armies of Ammon, Moab and Mount Seir during the reign of Jehoshaphat, as recorded in 2 Chr ch.20...
The second possibility is that it recounts “The destruction of the army of the Assyrian King Sennacherib during the reign of Hezekiah (2 Kgs 18-19)” Either way, Israel’s basic message is essentially the same here: Our God RULES; your King DROOLS.
And our God, Yahweh, RULES, because he’s promised and made GOOD on His promise, to be for us a “a very present[b] help in trouble.” And specifically, God has helped the psalmist, and God continues to help those who belong to Him today, in 4 distinctive ways.
#1 - God helps us by...
Providing PROTECTION (vv1-3, 7b, 11b)
The psalmist opens in v1 with the assurance that “God is our refuge and strength”. In vv 7 and 11, he’s gonna call God “our fortress”. Psalm 46 is sometimes referred to as “Martin Luther’s psalm”, because it was his favorite of ALL the psalms, and the one that inspired him to pen that most famous Reformation hymn: “A Mighty Fortress is Our God”.
Now, as I mentioned in my introduction, we already spent an entire week together detailing the hope we find in God’s promise of PROTECTION, in Psalm 27 - ‘Whom Shall I Fear’, where God is similarly described as our “stronghold”, a “shelter in the day of trouble”... very similar language. So I refer you back to that sermon from August.
But just look at the powerful imagery evoked here in vv2-3. The psalmist declares in v2, “THEREFORE”; because God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble; it is BECAUSE of who God is, in v1, that we are able to have the kind of confidence expressed in vv2 and 3. “Therefore… we will not fear though the earth gives way,
though the mountains be moved into the heart of the sea,”
The psalmist closes his eyes and pictures the most IMMUTABLE, unshakeable, solidly established fixture he can imagine: a mountain range… and then he IMAGINES those mountains being not just shaken, but picked up and tossed all the way into the middle of the ocean. And he calmly says, “Yeah, that wouldn’t really scare me all that much.”
Now, how many of y’all have ever experienced an earthquake? I know we shared this story with some of y’all already, but back in March, when we drove out to Utah to adopt Elijah, we were literally in Salt Lake two nights, and the one morning we were there just happened to be the morning of the biggest earthquake to hit Salt Lake City in 60 years - 5.7 magnitude, just about 8 miles from the AirBnB we were staying at. So let me just paint the scene for you: it’s 7am, the morning of our birth mom’s induction; she’s already at the hospital, so Polly and I are lying in bed, praying, literally just waiting for a call to either come pick up your new son, or “Just kidding again; you drove all the way out to Utah in the middle of a pandemic only to have a SECOND birth mom pull the rug out from under you.” That oughta give you a sense of the emotional state we were ALREADY in. My wife, God love her, is a self-professed worrier. On a NORMAL day, she’s probably at a 7 on the anxiety scale. So on this particular morning, she’s already at a like an 11. She woke UP off the charts. So we’re lying in bed… when the bed starts to vibrate, and within seconds the room is rumbling, moments later, the entire HOUSE is palpably shaking, light bulbs blowing out, pictures falling off the walls… I froze; Polly is SCREAMING; we seriously thought the world was ending. For a moment there, I literally thought: “This is it. Jesus is returning. And apparently he’s doing it in Salt Lake City; the Mormons were right after all. I’m still here, I missed the rapture.” I was VERY relieved when we ran out into the hallway half-dressed to find that our hosts, who were Mormon, had also not been raptured. I breathed a sigh of relief. But you wanna talk about needing HELP?! I can assure you Polly and I both needed help changing our undies after that traumatic event.
But in all seriousness, that was us being 8 or 10 miles away from an earthquake that didn’t even impact the topography of the area; an hour later, you couldn’t even tell there’d been an earthquake. Now, I want you to imagine with me, standing at the BASE of one of those peaks in Salt Lake City, and experiencing an earthquake so massive that the entire mountain range breaks off from the earth’s surface and starts sliding into the nearby lake. THAT’s the scene in Psalm 46, and the psalmist says, “Eh”.
V3: “the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam,
though the mountains tremble at its swelling.” The psalmist is just trying to envision the most terrifying natural phenomena conceivable. Any of you ever been out at sea when a storm rolls in? The first time I ever went scuba diving in the open water; I was 11 years old, I had just completed my certification, all the bookwork and quizzes that can’t possibly prepare you at ALL for actual diving; I had practiced in the swimming pool at the “Y”; that was about it. And now all of a sudden we’re boating out somewhere off the coast of Curacao, far enough that I can’t see land anymore. And we finally get to the dive site and the divemaster says, “Alright, it looks like there’s a storm coming, but I think we’ve got time to get a quick dive in before it gets too rough.” Not exactly the words you wanna hear moments before your first time plunging into the middle of the ocean! But my dad convinced me I’d be alright, so I started gearing up. And it’s my first time, so I take twice as long as everyone else, and the divemaster’s trying to be patient, but he also knows “We need to get going”, and in my rush to get ready, I didn’t even pause to consider the “ROAR and the FOAM” of the pre-storm waters down below. So I climb up on the side of the boat, heart pounding, put the oxygen in my mouth, take one last big nervous breath and jump… and immediately when I hit the water, the swells knock my mask right off my face and the regulator out of my mouth. And I’m just flailing. Fortunately my dad was already in the water and he helped me recover my mask and settle down. Only to realize I’d forgotten my weight belt so I was too buoyant to even sink below the water’s surface; I had to climb up the ladder and do it all over again. But I will NEVER forget what the “roar and foam”, the SWELLING of the waters felt like that day. That may have been the first time in my life I thought, “Yeah, I might die today.” Because I am VASTLY outmatched here. I am COMPLETELY at the mercy of the sea. If this storm comes quicker than expected, I have NO power over it.
But you know who does? Psalm 89:9 says, “You, [O Lord,] rule the raging of the sea;
when its waves rise, you still them.” There’s a beautiful story in the Gospel of Mark, ch4, where Jesus is sailing with his disciples and a storm whips up, and Jesus is so at peace, he’s asleep, but the disciples wake him up and Mark says, “He awoke and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, “Peace! Be still!” [Ooh, remember those words: “Be STILL”; we’re coming back to that at the end of our psalm!] And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm. 40 He said to them, “Why are you so afraid? Have you still no faith?” 41 And they were filled with great fear and said to one another, “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?”” (4:39-41)
It’s funny - Mark says they “feared” the storm, but ironically when Jesus calms it, they’re filled with GREAT fear… of him! Because anyone with that kind of power is WORTH fearing! Unless, he has promised to USE his power, to PROTECT you. To be your refuge and strength, your fortress, your “very present[b] help in trouble.” THEN you truly “be still and know that He is God”, then you can say, “What shall I fear?” If THAT kind of a God is for me, who or what could ever stand against me?
Last note on vv2-3: Willem VanGemeren explains in his commentary that these descriptions are MORE than just symbolic imagery (626); he says: “The world catastrophes [listed here] are the “woes” of the day of the Lord heralding the messianic age (cf. Isa 24:18-23; Jer 4:24; Nah 1:5).” These are signs of the coming “day of the Lord”, when God will return to “judge the living and the dead”. So the psalmist is essentially saying, “We don’t have to fear on the Day of Judgment”.
Now, you may recall from my stand alone message earlier in the summer on racial justice from Amos 5, that the OT prophets frequently warn Israel: “Woe to you who desire the day of the Lord! ...It is darkness, and not light” (Am 5:18). Like, be CAREFUL wishing that God would return and finally give people what they deserve, because THAT means justice for YOU TOO, and NO ONE is going to be able to stand before the almighty, perfectly holy God on that day, and feel good about her OWN track record; if you’re counting on your own “good deeds to outweigh your bad deeds” on that day, and hoping to hear God say, “Eh, I guess that’s good enough,” you are going to be SORELY mistaken and GRIEVED on that day. So how can the psalmist assure us here that we really don’t have to fear the Day of the Lord’s Judgment? Because on that day of otherwise GREATEST trouble - answering before God for every deed done in the body, 2 Cor 5:10 - on that day, we have the promise of a “very present help”. A MEDIATOR, who INTERCEDES on our behalf with God the Father. The man Jesus Christ. He says, “You think earthquakes and sea storms are scary; you haven’t seen ANYTHING yet - how about the righteous wrath of a holy God against your sinful rebellion!” And yet, in the face of THAT impending storm, Jesus invites us to “Come to me… and I will give you REST”; shelter from the storm. Protection.
Selah. We think in Hebrew the word means: “Pause your singing now, long enough to reflect on the DEPTH and the meaning of what you’ve just sung...”
#2 - God helps us by... Remaining PRESENT (vv4-5, 7a, 11a)
In vv4-5, the scene abruptly shifts from raging seas to a peaceful river:
“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.”
Tim Keller explains that in the ancient world, one of the reasons cities were often built on rivers was that it made the city much less vulnerable to siege. One of the strategies for conquering a city in the ancient world, actually the strategy that the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar employed to overthrow Jerusalem in the 6th c. BC: if you couldn’t penetrate the city walls, was to essentially surround it with your army, and blockade the city off. No food or supplies able to go in or out, and then you just wait them out. And we read of this happening to God’s people, in the OT prophets - Isaiah, Jeremiah - we hear about the Israelites getting so hungry, they’re forced to eat the dead bodies of their own children - yes, that’s in the Bible! But if you were built on a RIVER, you could ostensibly close off your walls, and still have an endless supply of fresh water and fish flowing right into town; that made it very difficult for enemies to blockade. But interestingly: almost always when the Bible refers to the “city of God”, it’s referring to Jerusalem. That’s where the Temple was, where God’s very presence dwelt amongst his people, in the OT. And yet, Jerusalem is NOT built on a river. So how are we supposed to make sense of v4 here?
James Boice explains that the reference here is to “the new spiritual Jerusalem, a symbol of heaven, which has been prepared by God as the final dwelling place of the saints. The ‘river’ in v4 [then] is the river that flows from God’s throne - (we read about it in Ezek 47; Zech 14:8; Rev 22: I saw “the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb 2 through the middle of the street of the city”); So in Psalm 46, the ‘holy place’ is the dwelling place of God himself in heaven.” And the psalmist prophetically foretells here of this new city of God, announcing in v5: “God is in the midst of her, she shall not be moved; God will help her when morning dawns.” God’s BEING in the midst of her, IS her help. The way he puts it in vv7 and 11 is this: “The Lord of hosts is with us”. The Hebrew word is “Immanuel” - God with us.
Do you know what it’s like to be HELPED just by someone’s PRESENCE, with you? That’s Polly, for me, every time we go to a party, a big social gathering where I don’t know a majority of the people. She knows going in: I’m clinging to her all night long. She better use the bathroom before we leave home, or hope there’s a family restroom, cuz she’s not allowed to leave me alone for any length of time. I USED to be that helping presence, for Ellery, at the beginning of the summer, when we’d go to the pool. Now of course she’s diving off the diving board without me. But back in June, we didn’t even have to have a RULE about waiting on Daddy to get in the pool, cuz she wasn’t going anywhere NEAR that water without Daddy being present.
That’s the kind of DEPENDENCY the Lord desires of us, for Him. He WANTS to be a very PRESENT help to us. God LOVES it when we cling to Him; He gets GLORY from being our refuge in trouble. So Proverbs 3:5 implores us to “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding”; lean on HIM instead. LET God’s presence be your help and your hope. I bet the disciples were a whole lot less worried on every boat ride after that first storm got calmed. Cuz they knew who was sleeping in the boat with them. And Jesus’ presence was enough.
Friends: Do WE realize that He’s still with us today? Not in the body, but in Spirit. Jesus assured us in John 14, just before he was crucified, raised, and ascended back into heaven: “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you… I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper,[f] to be with you forever, even the Spirit… he dwells with you and will be[g] in you.” (Jn 14:16-18) The same Spirit that calmed the storms and raised Jesus from the dead now lives in you, if you are a born-again follower of Christ. Brothers and sisters, that is an absolute GAME-changer!
#3 - God helps us by... Executing PUNISHMENT (vv6, 8)
Vv6 & 8: “The nations rage, the kingdoms totter;
he utters his voice, the earth melts…
Come, behold the works of the Lord,
how he has brought desolations on the earth.”
Typically in Scripture when we hear that phrase “come behold the works of God”, we expect it to be followed by a beautiful list of all God’s wonderful works of creation; like Psalm 104: “You stretched out the heavens like a tent.
You set the earth on its foundations,
so that it should never be moved…
You created all the plants and animals and give them all food and water...”
But those aren’t the kind of “works of God” the psalmist is inviting us to “behold” here in ch.46; No, HERE, he says: “See how he has brought desolations on the earth…” - Sure, it was an awe-inspiring MARVEL when God created everything that exists, the entire known and unknown UNIVERSE in a mere 6 days with nothing but the power of His word; but guess what - in an EQUALLY awe-inspiring MARVEL, He’s gonna MELT that very same universe, v6, with nothing but the “utterance of His voice”.
God has already told us: He’s gonna DO it, in the last days; this is an APOCALYPTIC psalm. Like so many of the psalms, Psalm 46 works on two levels: yes, there was certainly a present-day application of these words in the psalmist’s day, whether it was the 9th c BC with the armies of Ammon, Moab and Mount Seir, or the turn of the 7th c with God’s miraculous defeat of the Assyrians; there was no shortage of “raging nations”, “tottering kingdoms” many millennia ago, UPON which the Lord brought “desolations” to help and protect His people, Israel. But there’s also another dimension to these words; a future, prophetic dimension, that looks forward once again to that coming “Day of the Lord” we have already referenced; here’s how the apostle Peter describes it in the NT: “the heavens and earth that now exist are stored up for fire, being kept until the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly… the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies[b] will be burned up and dissolved” (2 Pet 3:7, 10)
That sounds a lot like the “melting desolations” of Psalm 46, doesn’t it?!
Here’s how the Book of Revelation describes that coming Day: “the kings of the whole world [will] assemble for battle on the great day of God the Almighty… And they assembled at the place that in Hebrew is called Armageddon… And there were flashes of lightning, rumblings,[c] peals of thunder, and a great earthquake such as there had never been since man was on the earth, so great was that earthquake. The great city was split into three parts, and the cities of the nations fell, and God remembered Babylon the great, to make her drain the cup of the wine of the fury of his wrath. And every island fled away, and no mountains were to be found.” (Rev 16:14-20)
That sounds a lot like the “mountains being thrown into the heart of the sea” while “the nations rage” in Psalm 46, doesn’t it?!
A day of reckoning is coming, friends; God has been warning us about it for 3,000 years now. And Peter warns us: “Don’t listen to those who scoff at such ideas… They will say, “Where is the promise of his coming? For ever since the fathers - Abraham and Isaac - fell asleep, all things are continuing as they were from the beginning of creation.” (2 Pet 3:4-5) They’ll say, “It’s been 2… 4… 6,000 years; if God was really gonna execute JUDGMENT on the world, on US, surely he’d have DONE it by now.” They scoffed in Peter’s day, they’re still scoffing today, and if God hasn’t pulled the trigger before then, they’ll still be scoffing another thousand or 2,000 years from now. But Peter assures us: “Do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. 9 The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you,[a] not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.” (3:8-9) Why hasn’t God pulled the trigger yet? Sounded the trumpet, saddled up his cloud, and finally put the raging nations in their rightful place! Avenged his people! Re-created and Restored this broken, fallen world that is groaning for redemption? That all sounds GREAT - “Come Lord Jesus!”; so why hasn’t he DONE it??
Because God is PATIENT! Because if He can include just one more son or daughter, in HIS Kingdom, win just ONE more soul over from the Kingdom of Hell and Darkness, and rescue them into His Kingdom of Heaven, the kingdom of LIGHT instead, God will wait another thousand YEARS because of His great love for us. How long would YOU wait, for your OWN prodigal child to return back home to you? If you then, who are WICKED, know how to wait patiently on your own straying children, how much more so will our perfectly loving heavenly Father wait on us.
But make no mistake, friends: he will NOT wait forever. His patience will one day run out. And Matthew 24:14 warns us, or for those of us who are SAVED, who can actually now look FORWARD to that coming Day of Judgment when the Lord returns, because we know He’s not gonna judge US according to our OWN righteousness, or UN-righteousness, as it were, but rather that God now sees us as clothed in the spotless righteousness of His perfect Son JESUS, Matthew 24:14 assures us that “this gospel of [God’s coming] kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.” That once everyone on earth has had a chance to hear the good news - to accept or reject Jesus as their Lord and Savior - He’s not going to wait another SECOND. Because God is looking forward to that coming day, when He will gather all his people, every nation, tribe and tongue, all together at last around His heavenly banquet table - God’s looking forward to that day even more than you and I are. So if YOU’RE looking forward to it, if a new heaven and new earth where there’s no more crying or sickness or death sounds pretty great to you in this dumpster fire world of ours, then I IMPLORE you today: do your part and go tell someone the good news about Jesus today. Because as long as your neighbor across the street thinks church is all about putting on fancy clothes to try and impress God, thinks the gospel is that if you try your hardest to be a good person maybe God will accept you, until your neighbor hears the TRUTH that she is a SINNER in desperate need of a SAVIOR, and praise God, He has PROVIDED one, and she can trust in Jesus today and be SAVED; until your neighbor has heard that good news, God might as well be waiting on YOU, to return and make all things new. We end every Sunday by claiming we’ll go out and “make disciples of all nations”; will we, really? If all 2 billion Christians actually got motivated, and decided to actually DO it on any given Sunday, and we each told 2 ½ of our neighbors about Jesus, I’m convinced he’d probably come back that next Monday. Is he waiting on us, West Hills? To do what he’s left us to do?
There is a coming day of the Lord, when everything will be made RIGHT, and the Lord will execute justice and PUNISHMENT for all who deserve it. That is ALL of us, friends. And the only way God’s justice is a HELP to sinners like you and me, is if he’s not judging us according to our own righteousness - have you trusted in JESUS today? And if YOU have, have you shared that good news with someone else in your circle of influence who is walking around right now, totally oblivious to the fact that at any moment if they get hit by a semi-truck and go to meet their Maker, they will face the PUNISHMENT that is rightfully due a rebellious sinner like them, unless they’ve repented and trusted in JESUS for salvation.
Which brings us, finally, to #4 - God helps us, by Bringing PEACE (vv9-10)
V9: God “makes wars cease to the end of the earth;
he breaks the bow and shatters the spear;
he burns the chariots with fire.”
Isaiah 2:4 “He shall judge between the nations…
and they shall beat their swords into plowshares,
and their spears into pruning hooks;
nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
neither shall they learn war anymore.”
Once again, there is the big-picture, apocalyptic future fulfillment; there is coming a day when there will be no war in the new heavens and new earth. But there’s also a personal application for each of us this morning. Because the most dangerous war YOU need to be CONCERNED about today isn’t the threat of a second Civil War if Trump loses and refuses to leave office. It isn’t the escalating tensions between the U.S. and China, or the ever-present threat of Iran or North Korea. It isn’t even this apocalyptic Day of the Lord, the final battle between God’s army and the powers of darkness; No. The single most dangerous war that YOU need to be concerned with today is the war raging inside your own HEART. It is the battle between the sin that dwells within you, and the Holy Spirit that is convicting you of it right now, and of your desperate need for a SAVIOR FROM that sin.
We really are so NEEDY, friends. We need HELP!
We need a God who can “make wars cease” not just to the ends of the EARTH, but to the depths of our HEARTS.
We need a God who can say “Peace! Be Still” not just to the wind and the waves, but to the storms in our SOULS.
We need a God who can say “Be still, and know that I am God”, and whose very PRESENCE brings us protection from the PUNISHMENT of sin that we otherwise deserve, a Savior who brings us PEACE.
Jesus is Immanuel, God with us. And he can bring you Peace today, if you will but surrender your life to Him in faith.
But make no mistake, God WILL be exalted. He says in v10: “ I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth!”” The only question is: will you bend your knee, and confess with your tongue, of your OWN volition, will you be amongst the humble who will be EXALTED on that day. Or will you be one of the proud who must be humbled. “Repent therefore, and turn back, that your sins may be blotted out, 20 that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that he may send the Christ appointed for you: His Son Jesus”. Let’s pray...