Ecclesia Princeton
Ecclesia Princeton
Ian Graham- Psalm 46: A Refuge and Strength
Pastor Ian Graham, in a one-off sermon, explores Psalm 146 and the promise of refuge.
If you have a Bible, you can open up to Psalm 46 this morning, for the director of music of the Sons of Korah, according to Alamoth, a song God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. Therefore, we will not fear. Though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging, there is a river whose streams make glad, the city of God, the holy place where the Most High dwells. God is within her. She will not fall. God will help her at the break of day.
Speaker 1:Nations are an uproar. Kingdoms fall. God will help her. At the break of day, nations are in uproar. Kingdoms fall. He lifts his voice. The earth melts. The Lord Almighty is with us. The God of Jacob is our fortress. Come and see what the Lord has done, the desolations he has brought on the earth. He makes wars cease to the ends of the earth. He breaks the bow and shatters the spear. He burns the shields with fire. He says be still and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations. I will be exalted in the earth. The Lord Almighty is with us.
Speaker 2:The God of Jacob is our fortress. This is the word of the Lord. I used to live near the woods in Louisiana and that is every bit as mythical as a place as you probably suppose and I lived on the Gulf Coast near New Orleans, louisiana, and our house bordered this big wooded expanse and I would often just kind of make my way out into the woods and bring some books and I'd set up a little fort which was like some sticks leaning against a couple trees, but to me it felt like a place that was safe from the world, that I could just get away. Perhaps you can remember in your own days, growing up, somewhere that you just get away. Maybe it was somewhere in your house, a little secret corner, maybe you had a place that you would get outside and go and just nobody would know that you were there.
Speaker 2:The motif of a hiding place is one that is powerful in our imagination. It's powerful in literature. I think of the, if you've read the Harry Potter series, the headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix. As the world is growing more dangerous and chaotic, the heroes have this place that they go, or in the last book they had this tent that is magical but is a refuge from all that threatens them. I think of if you read the book by Cormac McCarthy the Road. There's a point in this post-apocalyptic journey where they're always under threat, where they find this underground bunker, this dad and his son, and for just a little while in the story that keeps your heart palpitating and freaking out, they're safe and you're like as the reader, you're like, please just stay here, like, don't go out of the bunker again.
Speaker 2:This past year I read Leif Enger's recent novel. It's called I Cheerfully Refuse and the main character is pursued by a mysterious evil agent who is responsible for killing the main character's wife, and part of his response and the grief is to take up sailing on the Great Lakes as he tries to make his escape. Now, I'm not so familiar with that part of the world, but I was so drawn to the geography and the imagery that Leif Inger paints of this sailboat on Lake Michigan and Lake Superior and the character, in order to find refuge from all that threatens him, takes out and sails upon the open sea. And the narrator very brilliantly illustrates that setting sail on the open sea is not a safe place to be, especially when you're being pursued. But for the character itself. All the forces of nature threaten this man. And you see this stark contrast between all that is swirling around this man and the refuge that he finds in setting sail. And the character happens to play the bass too and he just pulls out this little battery-powered bass amp and he'll sit there and play the bass. And there's like this refuge that is forged in a world that is dark and tumultuous and dangerous.
Speaker 2:In Psalm 46, we find an invitation to this kind of hiding place. The psalm outlines two forces of cosmic proportions that threaten the people of God. First, the very earth itself. For the ancients, the world was not as we imagine it or as we receive it. You see, for us, post-galileo, post-copernicus, we know that our world is a part of a wider and vaster solar system, that the earth is not in fact the center of the universe, that it revolves around the sun and it's just a fraction, in fact simile, of the worlds that are available and possible because of the expanse that we know so little about of our solar system. But for the ancients, the earth was the center of the universe. And I want to put up just a brief image for you that kind of illustrates their way of imagining the cosmos. So the earth was situated between the firmament, the dome of the sky which held back waters, and waters that were underneath, and the sea.
Speaker 2:From the very beginning, was seen as emblematic of threat and of danger. The sea was the place of chaos, which is why in Revelation, the writer of Revelation, john, says the sea was no more. Again, it's not that God has anything against the oceans he created them, he made them. And if you walk by the waters and say, wow, this brings me closer to God, it's not all going to be undone in the end. But when John says that, he's saying the forces of chaos, the agents that would seem to threaten us in God's redeemed and restored world, are no more. It's why, in Genesis 1, the text begins by telling us that the Spirit of God is hovering over the surface of the deep, the tohu wabohu, this vast and empty void. From the very beginning, the writers of the scriptures make it clear to us that God is not a part of the world, that he is not subject to the forces of chaos, but he is over them, sovereign, and he is the creator. God is over them, sovereign, and he is the creator, god and the Lord, this creator that we meet in Genesis 1, is the Lord over all that would threaten us over the deep. And his work of creation in Genesis 1, his work accomplished by speaking his word, is to bring order out of the chaos. And he brings order out of the chaos declaring his sovereignty and his providential protection.
Speaker 2:And here, in the psalm, the earth and its calamities threaten the security of the people of God. Verses 2 and 3 of Psalm 46. Therefore, we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea. That threatens the safety and security of the people of God, the very forces of nature itself. But the earth and its unpredictability and its epic scale are not the only entities that are in uproar. The nations too, with their arrogant claims to ultimacy and the conflicts that result between them, that result also in widespread death and collateral damage, are also raising their shrill cries.
Speaker 2:Verse 6 tells us in Psalm 46, nations are an uproar, kingdoms fall. This is the context for the promises that Psalm 46 will declare to us Two irresistible forces, the very cosmos and the powers of empires and nations, uncertain, fickle, frail and yet so destructive in their consequences. And we transpose these realities into our own time and we see that not much has changed. For all the stories that our technology tells us of being able to harness or master or put the reins on nature. We behold with great terror and empathy towards our neighbors the terrible chaos that the earth can bring about the ongoing droughts in places like South Sudan, the torrential floods in Appalachia from Hurricane Helene. And this week I'm sure many of us have friends and family in Southern California watching people from the Los Angeles area lose their homes, lose everything they have, all of their earthly goods.
Speaker 2:And just as in the times of the sons of Korah, who wrote this psalm, we also live at the precarious intersection of political friction. The nations are, in fact, still in uproar. Russia has been in an ongoing campaign against Ukraine that threatens to spill into nuclear conflict. The government of China is posturing and expanding, which seems like it will inevitably lead to conflict with the United States. Israel is at war with several of its neighboring factions, and none of this is to make value judgment about who's right and who's righteous on the global political scale, but simply to affirm the words of the Psalms that the nations are in uproar and we live at the intersection of forces that are greater than we are, and we experience this obviously at a macro level. When we talk about things like nations and nature, we know that those things are bigger than us. But we also experience these kinds of forces at a micro level. And whatever form threatening chaos takes in your life, whether it be relational or marital conflict, conflict or the aftermath of divorce, addiction, your own mental chemistry, job loss, a feeling of hopelessness about the world, again, none of this is saying that all the ways that chaos manifests in our lives are sinful or are the products of our own choices. That's not the point. But to illustrate how chaos always places us in a place of recognizing how truly small and frail we really are. And amidst the acknowledgement of these very real threats, we find an even greater promise.
Speaker 2:The psalm begins by declaring confidently, almost defiantly, psalm 46, verse 1, god is our refuge and strength and ever-present help in trouble. Therefore, we will not fear. It goes on in verse 4, there is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy place where the Most High dwells. God is within her. She will not fall. God will help her at the break of day. Nations are in uproar. Kingdoms fall. He lifts his voice, the earth melts. The Lord Almighty is with us. The God of Jacob is our fortress.
Speaker 2:For the ancient Israelites, the images put forth here would have evoked a picture of Zion, jerusalem, the city of David. Zion was said to be a place where God dwells. But, as we see throughout the story, god dwelling in Zion is not a matter of geography and it's not a matter to be taken for granted. Rather, god chooses to dwell with his people in covenant love, an expression of his love and faithfulness towards them. By grace, god takes up residence where the people are. But we also see throughout the story of the Old Testament that this dwelling is relative From the pillar of cloud by day, fire by night, to the glory descending on the tent of meeting to the temple. God's glory, the Shekinah of His presence, will really and truly be with His people. But if the people reject God, if they say to God we don't want you here, then God will oblige. God will not impose himself upon us which is a haunting reality that if we say to God we actually don't want your ways, we don't want to live by your covenant and your code, then God will say okay, and we see this in the great prophets, places like Isaiah, where the people of the city of David are exploiting the poor and are offering worship to God with their lips. Yet their actions declare something quite different about the content of what it means to live a life for this God. We see this in Jeremiah and Ezekiel. If you read Ezekiel 9 and 10, you see this poignantly as the glory of God literally lifts up from the temple and departs leaves.
Speaker 2:In Psalm 46, the city of God is not marked by a zip code or a certain piece of real estate. It is the presence of God itself. Verse 5 says God is within her. She will not fall. God, the eternal, faithful one himself, is our refuge and our strength, not the contingencies of a place, no matter how dear they may be. The city where God dwells has its own fresh water supply, the river whose streams make glad the city of God.
Speaker 2:You know it's easy for us to forget how dependent we are on water and, being near to sources of water, we experienced a little minor drought in New Jersey this fall. It was a bit weird. I could tell I was getting a little bit old when a lot of my conversations were like wow, we sure could use some rain. Right, this is just the preliminaries to turning 40, so don't be alarmed. But the rain was so scarce that I even began to notice. I was like, oh, we could use some rain. But it's important throughout the course of history to be proximal to a source of water.
Speaker 2:Psalm 46 tells us the city where God dwells has its own fresh water supply, the river whose streams make glad the city of God. And the image of the river of God's dwelling place is held throughout the whole story of the scriptures. In Genesis 2, the river's water Eden. In John 7, jesus tells us that not only will we live near or by this river waterfront property to the redemption of all the cosmos, but that the rivers of living water will flow as a bright crystal from the throne of the Lamb. And to counteract all of the chaos that is so present in the world of the psalm and is no less present in our own world, god calls all the earth to account. What will God do about all this that threatens us? How will he be a refuge and strength? We see a glimpse of this in Psalm 46.
Speaker 2:God declares be still and know that I am God. I want to invite this stillness here for a moment, aware that often our lives feel, they feel frazzled at times. They often, just sometimes, feel disembodied, disconnected. We are subject to objects that seek to enslave us and our attention, and, at times, the collective attention of the people of God is a sign and a wonder that the God of the universe is present here, and so I'm just going to be quiet for a moment before we go on. Just invite that stillness, the knowing that is the spring of this stillness, to be still and to know. There's three things I want to focus on from this psalm To know about this God. God invites us to be still and to know. There's three things I want to focus on from this psalm to know about this God. The first is the designations that are used for God, the Lord Almighty, the Lord of hosts. Other translations have this as the God of angel armies, adonai Savaot.
Speaker 2:Throughout the scriptures, god is called the Lord of hosts, which means that he is the leader of the armies of heaven. In 2 Kings 6, elijah is at Dothan, surrounded by an army of overwhelming force, and he has a servant with him who's accompanying him, and he's looking at this army that is surrounding them and he is terrified, and Elisha, in response to this servant's very well-warranted anxiety and the servant crying out, what are we going to do? Elisha simply prays that the eyes of his servant would be open to the reality around him. And as the Lord enables the servant to see, he sees the armies and chariots of fire that accompany him. And it may not be in your disposition to see God as a general or as a fighter.
Speaker 2:The picture that the psalm paints is of these overwhelming forces earth and nations that we are caught in the crossfire of and at times, are arrayed against us, and part of the psalm's promise to counteract these forces is that there is a force greater than these forces that threaten us, whose mere voice causes their tumult to quiet. That is our refuge and our. The New Testament will talk about an adversary that prowls around like a roaring lion, a thief that comes to steal, kill and destroy, and the witness of the scriptures are yes, those forces of evil and darkness that are arrayed against you are real. Of evil and darkness that are arrayed against you are real. Also, the fact that you live in a fallen world puts you in a place, sometimes, where it seems like you are beholden to just random chance and those pains that you experience are real, but there is one greater, greater than the forces of darkness, greater than the calamities of chance, that is with you and that is for you, who commands the armies of heaven, and he is the God of hosts, and that God is your refuge and your strength.
Speaker 2:Courtney and I were watching a show recently where the main character and her Navy SEAL team one of those modern warfare kind of dramas were penned down by an advancing army and she didn't pray to God to open her eyes and, you know, didn't tell the biblical story. That's fine, but they were trying to hold out, hold on before being overtaken, calling for support and as the force moved closer and closer, flanking them, surrounding them, as it seemed like all was lost, what happens? Missiles rained down from heaven. You see, the jets showed up and started dropping missiles. And in warfare not that I like these kinds of examples, but superior air force makes all the difference. In our own battles, you have a superior force that is fighting on your behalf, fighting for everything that is good and beautiful and true, and sometimes we misappropriate where we are. We are in a battle, but the fight is not ours. God is our refuge and strength and ever-present help in time of need. He fights on our behalf and we'll see in just a moment how in Jesus, how he fights.
Speaker 2:The second thing we see is that God is not only the Lord of hosts, the God of angel armies, he's the God of Jacob. This title for God recalls God's most ancient promises of faithfulness to Israel. God is a God of promise and relationship. It is a stunning thing that God, when he wants to be known, is known by a family name I am the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. God, in revealing himself to us, says God is a God of relatedness, a God associated with a certain person, and I think that's so beautiful. You can almost put your own name into that as a follower of Jesus. God the God of Ian. God the God of Sarah, god the God of Courtney. This is how God wants to be known in the world, not as a God who is so big and so sovereign that he can sit aloof and afar, removed from everything, but God that is so near that he is as close as our, and often the Bible will just designate God as the God of Jacob.
Speaker 2:If you search throughout the story, it seems like Abraham, has more prominence. He's first in line in the telling of the story, but throughout the scriptures, god is known more often as the God of Jacob, and this strikes me as a bit interesting. God is known more often as the God, simply the God of Jacob, and this strikes me as a bit interesting. If you know any of Jacob's story, think about what you know about Jacob. How is Jacob presented to us? His name means heel, which I don't know what you've named your kids. I think you probably had something a little bit more meaningful in mind. But he's called heel because he's born as the second and a twin and he's reaching for his brother, esau's heel. We see that he is a swindler, a deceiver, and yet God says that's me, I'm the God of Jacob, and I think, as we look at the story, there's something so vital that's going on here. There's an episode in Jacob's life where he, having stolen his brother Esau's blessing, having been removed from Esau for a long period of time, learns that Esau is coming to see him. And in Jacob's mindset, this means that Esau is coming to exact vengeance upon him, coming to kill him.
Speaker 2:And we see Jacob in Genesis 32, on the long, dark night before all of this is about to transpire. Have you ever spent a long dark night not looking forward to the events that the next day held? Ever had that experience? Sleep doesn't come. Your anxieties won't let you rest. I think this is what Jacob is going through.
Speaker 2:And what we find on this long dark night is that a mysterious figure shows up and meets with Jacob, but not only meets with him, not only talks to him, shows up and wrestles with him, and we're not told why. It's a bit of a strange thing. But all of a sudden, jacob, on the darkest night of his life, is finding himself in a struggle. And he realizes this is not Esau that he's fighting with, but some mysterious heavenly figure. And Jacob will not relent, he will not let go. And it says that they wrestle until daybreak. And as day is breaking, jacob, relentless as he is, will not let go. And this mysterious figure says Day is coming, you have to let me go. Jacob says I won't let you go until you bless me. And as the dawn arrives, jacob receives the blessing of a new name no longer will you be called Jacob, but now you will be called Israel, for you have wrestled with God.
Speaker 2:And the day rises, jacob walks with a limp from that moment forward, and I think there's something emblematic about this moment in Jacob's life. You see, on the darkest night of his life, god comes to him, god stays with him In a way that I can only presume was meaningful to Jacob, in a way that I can only proclaim to you that in the darkest moments of your life, god will be there and he will stay the whole night through. But there's also something so profound about Jacob's wrestling with God that it will become the name and designation of all the people of God throughout the rest of the story. They will be known as Israel, people who wrestle with God. And I think that's an invitation for us to be people who don't live an adorned life with God or a cordoned off, quarantined life with God, where we say God, you get these parts, you get the parts that I'm pleased with or the parts that I have allotted for you. Rather, jacob's invitation is for us to put our whole selves before God, to bring the struggle that we often experience with God, the uncertainty, the dark nights that we go through, and say God, here is all of it, and find that God stays the whole night through God, as the God of Jacob Tells us that our lives rest upon the unshakable foundation of his promise, that we are not only called to walk with God but to wrestle with him, to struggle with him, and you will walk away changed, even though that change may be a limp. There is safety not only in God's provision and protection, but there's safety in the way that he calls us to be honest and genuine before him, to acknowledge that nothing in our lives is hidden from his sight, and so we might as well bring it all into the light and to find that which we allow God to have. He is ever faithful in healing the last thing we see. We see that God is the God of hosts. We see that God is the God of Jacob. We see his voice operating, the God of hosts. We see that God is the God of Jacob. We see his voice operating powerfully in this passage. Just as God brought the world to life by speaking, hebrews 1, verse 3 reminds us that he sustains all things by his powerful word.
Speaker 2:It's interesting that we have God speaking here, and it sort of functions in two distinct ways. First, god says be still and know that I am God. This is the answer to all the chaos and the threats and the tumult, and this almost functions like the edict of a king To the swirling nations and mountains. God says, almost by fiat be still and know that I am God. It Be still and know that I am God. And this is the final word. These forces cannot help but fall silent. But notice the content of what he says. God is not simply uttering decrees from heaven and managing the world. He could do that, but again, this is the God of Jacob, the God of relatedness. When we look closer at the content of God's decree, we see the invitation that is just as present as his sovereign word. He says be still and know that I am God. So God just doesn't say forces of darkness, forces of chaos, stop. He ceases them and then invites us to know him. So, just as he is declaring to these forces that they have no place in the providence of his kingdom, now he's saying at the same time and this is the invitation to know me, one of the practices that I've taken on in the early stages of this year we're two weeks into 2025, so my New Year's resolutions are still operating so is I read a lot, and so one of the allowances I've given myself is when I'm just like doing mindless tasks, like listening to podcasts.
Speaker 2:I listen to the dumbest sports podcasts I can find Just because, like, I spend my time with information I want to read, I want to be present. But, man, there are times I was doing the dishes or like mindless stuff I'm going to listen to, like just people talking about NBA games that happened last night and that is trivial. But not everything needs to be productive. That's a gift, right, but one of the things I've just tried to do to more intentionally allow that time to be not completely mindless is to start listening to the words of Scripture. I'm a very auditory person and so when I hear things, they stick with me, and so I pulled out the phone earlier as an object of torture and our demise.
Speaker 2:But it can be a gift too, and on this device there is an app called the Bible app aptly named, and it has several readings and recordings of the words of Scripture that you can just pull up and listen to, and oftentimes, as I'm and recordings of the words of Scripture that you can just pull up and listen to, and oftentimes, as I'm doing some of these meaningless tasks, I'm trying to just put myself in the world of the Scriptures more, and there's a mindlessness that still accompanies that. Right, you're still doing other things and you could say, well, it should have more attention, more focus. I agree, but there's something about the osmosis of just being present with God. That's been really, really beautiful, and so I commend these kinds of practices to you to say, like, what would it take for you just to take a step in allowing God to have more place of prominence in your life? Because God is saying be still to these forces that threaten us and know me, come and hear my word, come and hear my voice. As we talked about last week, jesus is God's word to us and he has spoken and his word is full and final. Jesus is our defender, our king, but he's not riding out at the front of an army of heaven. In fact, when he's tempted to do that on the cross, he says don't you know that I could call down the armies of heaven right now? But this is not the way. Jesus does not overcome those forces that threaten us by shedding the blood of his enemies, but rather by allowing his own blood to be shed, not saying to his enemies now it's time for vengeance, but by saying to his enemies forgive them, father, they don't know what they are doing. Jesus is the God of Jacob, the one who shows us what it means to be human, what it means to walk with God, and he's also the fulfillment of the ancient promises to Israel that, through their nation, all the nations on the earth would be blessed. He is the very voice of God. His word to us, god's voice to us, sounds like Jesus, like restoration, like hope.
Speaker 2:Joshua Rothman is a staff writer for the New Yorker. I'm going to invite the worship team to make their way forward, lydia and team. And he describes his experience of being born legally blind, with seemingly no remedy. He has a severe form of astigmatism that allows him to see, but not fully, and he has this other corneal issue that just his early ophthalmologists just say there's no cure for this. And at some point he describes his experience of finding some sort of a remedy, and he talks about this in this piece. He says all of this.
Speaker 2:This bout with lifelong blindness ended when I was in my mid-20s. An unusually curious and adventurous optometrist spent an afternoon with me. Eventually, he wrote out a prescription for contacts and when I used them, my vision improved by a factor of four. I saw things that I'd never seen before. Streets grew longer. For the first time, I saw the horizon. The three-dimensionality of buildings astonished me. Their newly visible interiors made them look like open jewelry boxes Giving a lecture.
Speaker 2:I suddenly saw the faces of my students. I found their beauty arresting, as though the members of the class had been sculpted by Rodin. For the first time I saw the special facial expressions of old friends On the subway. I grew so absorbed by the eye colors of the people around me that I missed my stop. One day it snowed, and as I walked through the Boston Public Garden I was moved to tears by the sight of individual snowflakes drifting with the wind. I'd long enjoyed a piece of music Debussy wrote for his three-year-old daughter, claude Emma, called the Snow is Dancing. For the first time I could see that dance. It remains my most beautiful and visual memory. Now you can see it as we hear God's word. This is what's happening. He is transferring us from our blindness, our distorted perception of the world, to see him clearly and he's bringing the world into focus in all the beauty of who he is.
Speaker 2:As he calls to us be still and know that I am God, we begin to see God more clearly, and as we see him more clearly, we see everything more clearly. And so I just want to pull us back to the invitation of Jesus' word To not be subject and overwhelmed by the forces that are very real of chaos, whether that be macro or micro, but to hear the words of the one who called the storm to still peace. Be still, to see what God has done. He makes wars cease to the ends of the earth, psalm 46 tells us. And those aren't just wars that are visceral and geopolitical, those are the wars that are going on within us. His promise of peace is real and is for us, and he is wanting to bring everything into going on within us. His promise of peace is real and is for us, and he is wanting to bring everything into bright clarity, for us To be still and know that he is God. Jesus, we pray. Come Holy Spirit, god, in the stillness of this moment, lord, would you make your presence known. God, in the power of your gentle whisper, would you utter the mystery and truth of the gospel, lord Jesus, that there is nothing we have to do that remains undone, there is nothing that we have done that excludes us from this peace, but that you have spoken by the word of your very life, your life, your death, your resurrection, your ascension, the word that call all the world to account. Be still and know that I am God, that you have nailed the principalities and powers of darkness to the cross, triumphing over them. That by your blood shed, jesus, we have invitation to a peace that surpasses all understanding. God and come what may, lord, we will find that you are our refuge, our strength and ever-present help in time of need. That we can enter into scenes of sadness and lament, god, without being overcome by them, because you are our refuge and our strength, god, overcome by them because you are our refuge and our strength, god.
Speaker 2:God. That when those moments come for us, that we will find that you are our refuge and our strength, the Lord Almighty, the God of hosts, the God of Jacob, and that you are calling us, at the outset of this new calendar year, to pay attention to the words that you've spoken, because of what it says about who you are and what it says about who we are. So, god, I pray for those who are dealing viscerally, god, with acute sense of just, that everything is disordered, that everything is meaningless, that everything is chaotic. God, that you would speak your word of truth that orders the world. You would invite a stillness of heart, lord, to behold who you are and what you've done.
Speaker 2:God, I pray for this church, lord, that we could be collectively, by our love for you, god, a refuge and a strength. Lord, to those suffering from loneliness and despair and addiction. God, that this would be a place and a hospital of healing. Jesus, god, would you greet us here in the stillness, lord, minister, your presence here in this place. We ask these things in your name and we declare the truth about who you are, in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.