SPEAKER_00: Psalm 91.
SPEAKER_00: I must confess that as we are doing a summer series in the Psalms, and we kind of get to pick which one we're preaching.
SPEAKER_00: Psalm 91, if I I don't like having favorites, but if I had to have a favorite, I would say Psalm 91 is my favorite.
SPEAKER_00: And here is why.
SPEAKER_00: Psalm 91 is uh many times what has lit up the screen of my phone on sleepless nights.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, if you are to go to my office, I have a notebook, a journal, uh, where I have handwritten Psalm 91 time and time and time and time again as I've sought to memorize this psalm and just lean on this psalm.
SPEAKER_00: And many times when you cry out to the Father and you don't even know what to cry out, Psalm 91 is a good place to go.
SPEAKER_00: And so I hope that if you find yourself in a time like this, or you bookmark this psalm, that this is a psalm for the hurting heart.
SPEAKER_00: This is a psalm for the one crying out for refuge.
SPEAKER_00: So think of that as we read and study this psalm this morning.
SPEAKER_00: In the autumn of 1854, cholera swept through the borough of Southwark in London.
SPEAKER_00: And there was a young preacher, he was barely 20 years old, and he spent his days going from house to house, subjecting himself to exposure to cholera, but so he could go and comfort the dying.
SPEAKER_00: The name of that young preacher was Charles Spurgeon.
SPEAKER_00: Years later, he wrote that he became so weary from being constantly surrounded by the death and dying that he felt himself sinking under the weight of it until one day, when he was walking home from yet another funeral, he noticed a scrap of paper that was posted in a shoemaker's shop, and it was posted on the window.
SPEAKER_00: On it, someone, probably the store owner, had written on it and displayed for the community to see these words from Psalm ninety one verses nine and ten.
SPEAKER_00: Because you have made the Lord your dwelling place, the most high who is my refuge, no evil shall be allowed to befall you, no plague come near your tent.
SPEAKER_00: Spurgeon said that the effect from reading that on his heart was immediate.
SPEAKER_00: He wrote later that in essence that faith took hold of the promise that he could go forth and continue ministering in such a difficult time.
SPEAKER_00: His fear of the plague left him, and he went on boldly visiting the sick without dread and without harm.
SPEAKER_00: Now that's a beautiful story set against the backdrop of tragedy.
SPEAKER_00: But it raises a hard question for us as the church, as a people of God.
SPEAKER_00: It's a question that we don't need to stray away from.
SPEAKER_00: Because we know that there are Christians who did die of cholera.
SPEAKER_00: We know that there have been believers all throughout time who have died of varying illnesses, who have died in car accidents, who have died in wars, faithful missionaries continue to be martyred.
SPEAKER_00: Godly parents have buried their children.
SPEAKER_00: We have seen the far reaches of devastation that we have experienced as people because of effects of the fall.
SPEAKER_00: So what do we do when we read a psalm that says, No evil shall be allowed to befall you?
SPEAKER_00: Is this promise true?
SPEAKER_00: And if it is true, for whom is it true and in what way is it true?
SPEAKER_00: And this morning we're going to answer that question the same way that we have walked through every psalm in this series by standing at three different vantage points.
SPEAKER_00: First, the historical horizon.
SPEAKER_00: What did this psalm mean to the original audience?
SPEAKER_00: Secondly, the Christological horizon.
SPEAKER_00: How is this psalm pointing us to Christ?
SPEAKER_00: How is all of Scripture pointing us to Christ?
SPEAKER_00: And third, the congregational horizon.
SPEAKER_00: What does this psalm mean through those horizons, through the historical horizon, through the Christological horizon?
SPEAKER_00: What does this mean for you today?
SPEAKER_00: What does this mean for us as a church today, as Christ's blood bought people gathered here this morning?
SPEAKER_00: So follow along as we read Psalm 91.
SPEAKER_00: He who dwells in the shelter of the most high will abide in the shadow of the Almighty.
SPEAKER_00: I will say to the Lord, My refuge and my fortress, my God in whom I trust, for he will deliver you from the snare of the fowler, and from the deadly pestilence.
SPEAKER_00: He will cover you with his pinions, and under his wings you will find refuge.
SPEAKER_00: His faithfulness is a shield and a buckler.
SPEAKER_00: You will not fear the terror of the night, nor the arrow that flies by day, nor the pestilence that stalks in darkness, nor the destruction that wastes at noonday.
SPEAKER_00: A thousand may fall at your side, ten thousand at your right hand, but it will not come near you.
SPEAKER_00: You will only look with your eyes and see the recompense of the wicked.
SPEAKER_00: Because you have made the Lord your dwelling place, the most high who is my refuge, no evil shall be allowed to befall you, no plague come near your tent.
SPEAKER_00: For he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways.
SPEAKER_00: On their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone.
SPEAKER_00: You will tread on the lion and the adder, the young lion and the serpent, you will trample underfoot.
SPEAKER_00: Because he holds fast to me in love, I will deliver him, I will protect him, because he knows my name.
SPEAKER_00: When he calls to me, I will answer him, I will be with him in trouble, I will rescue him and honor him with long life, I will satisfy him and show him my salvation.
SPEAKER_00: So firstly this morning, the historical horizon.
SPEAKER_00: This truly is a song of refuge for a pilgrim people.
SPEAKER_00: And we think about a pilgrim people, we think about the people of Israel, but we also think about ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: We are in the wilderness, waiting to get to glory.
SPEAKER_00: It carries no superscription, no author's name, no historical note, but it is placed right after Psalm 90.
SPEAKER_00: And we should know that this is not accidental.
SPEAKER_00: Psalm 90 is titled A Prayer of Moses, the man of God, ancient Jewish tradition, in fact, attributes Psalm 91 to Moses as well.
SPEAKER_00: We don't know for sure if that's true or not, but whether or not that is so, it seems that the editors of the Psalms wanted us to read these two Psalms together.
SPEAKER_00: Psalm 90 is a psalm of human frailty.
SPEAKER_00: You return man to dust.
SPEAKER_00: We bring our years to an end like a sigh.
SPEAKER_00: We're lucky if we get to 80.
SPEAKER_00: That's what Psalm 90 says.
SPEAKER_00: Dust.
SPEAKER_00: We are nothing but dust dwelling in the shelter of Almighty God.
SPEAKER_00: That is the movement from Psalm 90 to Psalm 91, a recognition of how frail we are, directing our glance straight to the Almighty God that we rest in.
SPEAKER_00: Those two have to be viewed rightly.
SPEAKER_00: If you don't view yourself as frail, I have no need for the shadow of the Almighty, for which you would be gravely mistaken.
SPEAKER_00: And then we notice the imagery that Psalm 91 uses, imagery mainly of the wilderness and imagery of war.
SPEAKER_00: We see the snare of the fowler, the terror by night, the arrow that flies by day, pestilence stalking in darkness, lions and outers underfoot, striking your foot against a stone on a rocky path.
SPEAKER_00: What does this sound like?
SPEAKER_00: You may not connect the dots, that's what I'm here for.
SPEAKER_00: This is exactly the world of Israel for 40 years between Egypt and Canaan.
SPEAKER_00: A pilgrim people in a dangerous wasteland, wandering in the wilderness with no walls, with an army that's not worth a name, no fortress of stone.
SPEAKER_00: In the wilderness, they had one fortress, and that was God Almighty.
SPEAKER_00: And God is very well introduced to us in the opening of Psalm 91.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, in the first two verses, we are introduced to four different names of God right out of the gate.
SPEAKER_00: And the psalmist is stacking these names up for us very quickly, very intentionally, and very boldly telling us from the get-go who this God is.
SPEAKER_00: He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High, the name Elion, the God exalted above every throne and every power, will abide in the shadow of the Almighty, Shaddai, the God of overwhelming sufficiency, the God who provides.
SPEAKER_00: The name by which he bound himself to Abraham, I will say to the Lord Yahweh, the covenant name, the name that was revealed at the burning bush, and my God in whom I trust, Elohim, and note the little word my.
SPEAKER_00: This is the one that we are stacking up, a fortress for you to take refuge in.
SPEAKER_00: This is the castle that's being built for us as a people to come and take refuge in.
SPEAKER_00: This is the fortress.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's one thing to say, uh, you know, where do you go in the event of a tornado?
SPEAKER_00: You know, where do you go in your house?
SPEAKER_00: You know, where does someone direct you?
SPEAKER_00: You know, you want someplace strong, you want someplace safe, you want something that can stand, that can hold.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you can call anything a fortress.
SPEAKER_00: But is it truly a fortress?
SPEAKER_00: And the psalmist, before he points you towards that fortress, he shows you what this fortress is.
SPEAKER_00: And we already have this towering image of a God who is worthy to serve as a fortress for his people.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 1 is a declaration about the one who dwells with God.
SPEAKER_00: In verse 2, a single voice stops forward and says, I will say to the Lord, my refuge and my fortress.
SPEAKER_00: And then it changes.
SPEAKER_00: Verses 3 through 13, that psalm turns and directly addresses the person.
SPEAKER_00: He will deliver you, he will cover you.
SPEAKER_00: And so now the language turns from an eye to a direction, as if they're talking to us.
SPEAKER_00: You will not fear.
SPEAKER_00: And then in verses 14 through 16, we see God speak himself.
SPEAKER_00: The Almighty takes the microphone from the psalm and makes eight I will promises over the one who holds fast to him in love.
SPEAKER_00: So the psalm begins with a man declaring his trust, and it ends with God declaring his commitment.
SPEAKER_00: That's the shape of this covenant faith.
SPEAKER_00: God's always faithful to his covenant with his people.
SPEAKER_00: And we have this imagery in this psalm, this imagery of refuge.
SPEAKER_00: And the pictures here are drawn from two very different worlds.
SPEAKER_00: Intentionally so.
SPEAKER_00: Some are military.
SPEAKER_00: We have a refuge, we have a fortress, we have a buckler, we have a shield.
SPEAKER_00: These are all military terms, things that give us defense, things that give us protection.
SPEAKER_00: And then in the same psalm, we have words that are tender and almost nurturing.
SPEAKER_00: Well, not almost, they are nurturing.
SPEAKER_00: He will cover you with his pinions.
SPEAKER_00: Under his wings you will find refuge.
SPEAKER_00: And the image of the wings looks back to the Exodus itself.
SPEAKER_00: You yourselves have seen how I bore you on eagle's wings and brought you to myself, Exodus 19, 4.
SPEAKER_00: And forward to the wings of the cherubim.
SPEAKER_00: Remember the wings of the cherubim stretched out over the mercy seat in the tabernacle to dwell in the shadow in the shelter of the Most High.
SPEAKER_00: This is sanctuary language.
SPEAKER_00: This is the sanctuary of God.
SPEAKER_00: It's his fortress, it's a place under his wings, it's a place of shelter, it's a place of refuge, and it's a place of worship.
SPEAKER_00: It's to live, as it were, in the Holy of Holies itself.
SPEAKER_00: Nearer to God than the high priest himself dared to go.
SPEAKER_00: That's where this psalm is inviting us to take refuge.
SPEAKER_00: So we have these two descriptors that portray that our God is mighty, and he's an infinitely strong warrior, in whom his children can safely hide behind.
SPEAKER_00: And he's also the great nurturer.
SPEAKER_00: Like a mother holding her child in a thunderstorm.
SPEAKER_00: He takes his children into his arms and he lovingly and tenderly consoles them.
SPEAKER_00: He's not just a warrior that knows how to fight, he's a loving father that knows how to be tender and gracious and merciful and kind and comforting.
SPEAKER_00: And here's the thing: he's infinitely perfect at both of those.
SPEAKER_00: You know, when we often talk about parenting, um, it's really interesting to see the love of a mother and the love of a father come out in parenting your children and how similar and yet different those things are.
SPEAKER_00: A mother is good at loving her children in a motherly manner.
SPEAKER_00: I read one time that a mother is very good at nurturing the child and who they are now.
SPEAKER_00: The love of a father is very good at nurturing a child and who they will become.
SPEAKER_00: And we need both of those loves together.
SPEAKER_00: And we know that sometimes we as dads may not be as good at maybe nurturing as a mother is.
SPEAKER_00: But the Lord is perfect in all of these.
SPEAKER_00: He's not lacking in any of these attributes of who he is.
SPEAKER_00: He is simultaneously a great warrior defending his children and a great nurturer who comforts them.
SPEAKER_00: It's difficult to imagine these two images being combined into one God, and yet they are.
SPEAKER_00: And that's the God that you and I are here to worship this morning and whom we take refuge in.
SPEAKER_00: But there is a tension in this psalm.
SPEAKER_00: There's a tension that we shouldn't avoid.
SPEAKER_00: We don't want to avoid tensions.
SPEAKER_00: The promises of this psalm are absolute.
SPEAKER_00: We can trust in them.
SPEAKER_00: A thousand may fall at your side, ten thousand at your right hand, but he but uh but it will not come near you.
SPEAKER_00: No evil shall be allowed to befall you.
SPEAKER_00: Angels will guard you in all your ways.
SPEAKER_00: And yet, Israel's own history is full of faithful men and women who suffered terribly.
SPEAKER_00: Job was righteous and calamity buried his children.
SPEAKER_00: Jeremiah trusted the Lord and was thrown into a cistern.
SPEAKER_00: The martyrs of Hebrews 11 were stoned, and they were sawn in two.
SPEAKER_00: If we read Psalm 91 as an unconditional insurance policy against all earthly harm for all who recite it, the psalm becomes false and worse, it becomes cruel and it makes scripture out to be a liar.
SPEAKER_00: But we know that this is not true.
SPEAKER_00: We know and believe that every single word of scripture is true.
SPEAKER_00: How can we align Psalm 91 with our brothers and sisters in Nigeria?
SPEAKER_00: I read another this morning, I took a picture of it.
SPEAKER_00: Uh Pastor Ezekiel Dacomo.
SPEAKER_00: He's buried nine of his relatives who have been killed by Islamic extremism in Nigeria.
SPEAKER_00: And now they've sent him a letter and said, if you don't stop, we're coming to kill you too.
SPEAKER_00: And this is what he posted on the internet.
SPEAKER_00: My name is Reverend Ezekiel Dacomo, and today I speak not with hatred, but with a heart full of pain and faith.
SPEAKER_00: A few days ago, Felani Herdzman sent a threatening letter to me and to members of my church.
SPEAKER_00: The letter was written in both Hassa and English, and its message was terrifying.
SPEAKER_00: They have vowed to attack me and kill me soon, just as they killed nine of my relatives.
SPEAKER_00: Copies of these threatening letters have already been handed over to the security operatives.
SPEAKER_00: Many people have asked me if I am afraid.
SPEAKER_00: My answer is no.
SPEAKER_00: Is my crime that I preach the gospel of Jesus Christ and refuse to remain silent while innocent people are killed?
SPEAKER_00: If that is my crime, then I will continue until my last breath.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus Himself warned us in John 15, 20.
SPEAKER_00: If they persecuted me, then they will persecute you.
SPEAKER_00: I did not choose this path to be safe.
SPEAKER_00: How does Psalm 91 line up with that?
SPEAKER_00: Nine of his relatives, he's already buried nine of his relatives.
SPEAKER_00: They're probably coming to kill him.
SPEAKER_00: How do you line this up?
SPEAKER_00: He's going to send his angels to guard you.
SPEAKER_00: Are they not, does Nigeria, does the church in Nigeria just not get the higher quality guardian angels?
SPEAKER_00: What's going on?
SPEAKER_00: How do we piece this together?
SPEAKER_00: Who can truly claim these promises in Psalm 91 that no evil shall befall us?
SPEAKER_00: Verse 1 describes a pattern, the one who dwells, who abides, who has made the Most High His habitation, who holds fast to God in love, who knows his name.
SPEAKER_00: Like Psalm 15, which asks, O Lord, who shall sojourn in your tent?
SPEAKER_00: Psalm 91 quietly raises this question: where is the man who dwells so completely in God that every one of these promises lands on him without any leftover, without remainder?
SPEAKER_00: Israel sang this psalm for a thousand years, waiting, whether they knew it or not, for that man to appear.
SPEAKER_00: And this is where we get to the Christological horizon.
SPEAKER_00: We see the first one who fulfills dwelling in that shelter.
SPEAKER_00: And when that man appeared, Jesus Christ, the first person recorded in Scripture who quoted this psalm to him was Satan.
SPEAKER_00: This is Satan's favorite psalm.
SPEAKER_00: Did you know that?
SPEAKER_00: Think of that.
SPEAKER_00: In the wilderness, when Jesus went into the wilderness and was tempted by Satan, the very landscape and backdrop upon which Psalm 91 was written, Jesus finds himself there.
SPEAKER_00: Satan takes Jesus to the pinnacle of the temple and said, If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down, for it is written, He will command his angels concerning you, and on their hands they will bear you up lest you strike your foot against the stone.
SPEAKER_00: Satan quoted Psalm 91, 11 and 12 to Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Satan is a diligent student of Scripture.
SPEAKER_00: He's far better than any of our seminary professors and our seminary students and our preachers and our academics.
SPEAKER_00: Satan knows Scripture more diligently than any of us.
SPEAKER_00: And he is a deceitful handler.
SPEAKER_00: Of it.
SPEAKER_00: Now many commentators notice that he kind of clips the quotation a little bit.
SPEAKER_00: Does that sound familiar?
SPEAKER_00: We hear that a lot in today's society.
SPEAKER_00: People kind of clip the quotations of scripture.
SPEAKER_00: Sounds like an old trick from the serpent himself.
SPEAKER_00: He omits the phrase, in all your ways, the ways of humble obedience, and he twists the promise of protection that God gives in Psalm 91, and he twists it into a dare, a demand that God prove himself on our terms.
SPEAKER_00: If God truly is who he says he is, Jesus, then go on.
SPEAKER_00: Jump off.
SPEAKER_00: His angels will protect you.
SPEAKER_00: Now here is the deep irony.
SPEAKER_00: Satan quoted this psalm to the only man in history of whom it is completely and unconditionally true.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is the one who completely dwelt in the shelter of the Most High from eternity in the bosom of the Father and in his incarnate life through unbroken communion, perfect trust, sinless obedience.
SPEAKER_00: Every line of verse one finds its full weight in him, in Jesus, precisely because Jesus truly trusted his Father completely and refused to test him.
SPEAKER_00: Again, it is written, you shall not put the Lord your God to the test, was his answer.
SPEAKER_00: Faith rests on God's promises.
SPEAKER_00: Presumption performs experiments on them.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus shows us the difference.
SPEAKER_00: Now, the question is, if Jesus kept, if he's the only man that this has been fulfilled in, that we see who dwells in the shelter of the Most High, the question then shifts.
SPEAKER_00: Does God keep his promises in Psalm 91 for Jesus?
SPEAKER_00: All these promises that we see that no evil shall befall you, he will command his angels concerning you.
SPEAKER_00: Did God keep these promises for Christ?
SPEAKER_00: Well, angels did minister to him in the wilderness after the temptation in Matthew 4.11.
SPEAKER_00: And in Gethsemane an angel was sent to strengthen him, Luke 22, 43.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 13 says, You will tread on the lion and the adder, the young lion and the serpent you will trample underfoot.
SPEAKER_00: From the earliest centuries, the church has heard in that echoes of Genesis 3.15, the seed of the woman crushing the serpent's head.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is the serpent trampler.
SPEAKER_00: He bound the strong man, he cast out demons with the word.
SPEAKER_00: Paul tells the church the God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet.
SPEAKER_00: But we still have some difficult questions to answer.
SPEAKER_00: Because then we see what?
SPEAKER_00: We see the cross.
SPEAKER_00: We see the nails, we see the darkness, we see the cry from Christ.
SPEAKER_00: My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
SPEAKER_00: So my question to you is was God's promises in Psalm 91 broken?
SPEAKER_00: Did God not fulfill his promise to Christ in Psalm 91?
SPEAKER_00: Surely the cross is not what it looks like to dwell in the shelter of the Most High.
SPEAKER_00: You told me to come into your refuge, and now I'm laid out in front of everybody.
SPEAKER_00: Surely this is not what it looks like for God to take Christ under his wings.
SPEAKER_00: On Good Friday, it looked to the world as though evil had befallen Jesus Christ, as though the plague of God's own wrath had come near his tent, and as though no angelic legions were coming to his rescue.
SPEAKER_00: Though Jesus himself said he could ask for twelve of them.
SPEAKER_00: But here's the glory of the gospel that we have to understand this tension, that Psalm 91 is completely true, and that Christ is the one who fulfills it, that Christ completely dwelled in the shelter of the Most High, and that God fulfilled all of his promises in Psalm 91 to Christ, and you and I are inheritors of that.
SPEAKER_00: This is the beauty of the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: The Father did not deliver his son from death, he delivered him through death.
SPEAKER_00: Listen again to verses 14 through 16 with ears not in tune with the cross of Good Friday, but with the empty tomb of resurrection Sunday.
SPEAKER_00: Because he holds fast to me in love, I will deliver him.
SPEAKER_00: When he calls to me, I will answer him.
SPEAKER_00: I will be with him in trouble, I will rescue him and honor him.
SPEAKER_00: With long life I will satisfy him and show him my salvation.
SPEAKER_00: Hebrews 5 7 tells us that Jesus offered up prayers and supplications with loud cries and tears to him who is able to save him from death.
SPEAKER_00: And here's what we read in Scripture He was heard.
SPEAKER_00: Christ was heard by the Father.
SPEAKER_00: And he was not heard by the cup passing over him.
SPEAKER_00: But God the Father answered the cries of God the Son with a resurrection on that Sunday morning.
SPEAKER_00: I will rescue him and honor him.
SPEAKER_00: And now Christ is seated at the right hand of the Majesty on high.
SPEAKER_00: With long life I will satisfy him.
SPEAKER_00: He is alive forevermore, and death has no dominion over Christ Jesus, the one in whom this psalm is fulfilled.
SPEAKER_00: Now, through the gospel, we learn as a people that Christ paves the way for us to join him in Psalm 91 in dwelling in the shelter of the Most High.
SPEAKER_00: You know, this isn't something that we can force ourselves into.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is not only the true dweller in the shelter of the Most High, He Himself has become the shelter itself for everyone else to flee to.
SPEAKER_00: You see what this means?
SPEAKER_00: Jesus Christ fulfilled this psalm, and in doing so, he himself is the fortress by whom the psalm is talking about for his people.
SPEAKER_00: The refuge of the refuge imagery of this psalm find its final form in the cross, where if you imagine the cross, you imagine the people of God taking shelter under the wings of God.
SPEAKER_00: And what do we see at the cross?
SPEAKER_00: We see Jesus Christ with his arms outstretched for his people to come underneath his outstretched arms while he takes our sin upon himself.
SPEAKER_00: And this is where he is our refuge and our strength.
SPEAKER_00: This is why Jesus said in Matthew 23, 37, O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often I would have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and we see the wings of our Almighty God stretched out on the cross.
SPEAKER_00: It's because Christ outstretched his arms on the cross that we as his people are now able to have a fortress to come under.
SPEAKER_00: Without the cross, without the resurrection, none of it exists for us.
SPEAKER_00: In Christ, God not merely offers us a fortress, he is our fortress.
SPEAKER_00: And the pierced, broken body of Christ is the door by which we go through to enter into it.
SPEAKER_00: And thirdly, the congregational horizon, what it means to live under the shadow of the Almighty.
SPEAKER_00: So, what does this mean for us as a congregation today and this year with our diagnoses, with our mortgages, with our anxieties, with the bad phone calls?
SPEAKER_00: How do we apply this in all of that?
SPEAKER_00: Let me press four applications for you this morning.
SPEAKER_00: Number one, do not use this psalm as a charm, but trust the God of the Psalm.
SPEAKER_00: Archaeologists tell us that Psalm 91 is the psalm most frequently found on ancient ambulance, copied onto scraps of papyrus, rolled up and worn around the neck as protective magic by pagans and superstitious Christians alike.
SPEAKER_00: People have always been tempted to treat these words as a talisman.
SPEAKER_00: Recite the verse, wear the verses, and no harm can touch you.
SPEAKER_00: But that's Satan's hermeneutic from the pinnacle of the temple.
SPEAKER_00: Clipping the promise of protection loose from the relationship and turning God into a mechanism of luck.
SPEAKER_00: The promises of Psalm 91 belong to those verse 14 describes, those who hold fast to God in love and know his name.
SPEAKER_00: Psalm 91 is not a magical spell to be recited, but it lays out a savior to be trusted.
SPEAKER_00: Don't look at it as a piece of paper to put into your pocket.
SPEAKER_00: Look at it as something directing you to put your soul in the hands of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Scripture is not to be abused for earthly comforts.
SPEAKER_00: To think that this psalm is going to protect you from calamity is rooted in the prosperity gospel.
SPEAKER_00: This psalm does something much better than that.
SPEAKER_00: It promises to deliver you through the calamity and find your end in Christ and in all the inheritance that He has bought for you in glory.
SPEAKER_00: No calamity can take that away from you.
SPEAKER_00: Number two, take the real protection of God's promises.
SPEAKER_00: Nothing can touch you outside of your Father's will.
SPEAKER_00: So does this Psalm rightly read actually promise God's people protection in this lie?
SPEAKER_00: You know, so if we still carry that tension and we know that, okay, what does it promise?
SPEAKER_00: Yes, it does.
SPEAKER_00: Real present protection.
SPEAKER_00: The 1689 Baptist Confession puts it this way: God upholds, directs, disposes, and governs all creatures and things from the greatest even to the least, by his most wise and holy providence.
SPEAKER_00: What this means is not one arrow flies by day, not one pestilence stalks by night.
SPEAKER_00: Apart from the hand of our Father, nothing, and I mean nothing, can befall the child of God that has not first passed through the Father's love and been assigned for a purpose for your good and for his glory.
SPEAKER_00: What this means, dear brothers and sisters, is that every calamity that comes your way, if you are in Christ, has been sifted through the hands of your Father.
SPEAKER_00: And he will use them for your good and for his glory.
SPEAKER_00: And he owes you no explanation on this earth as to why and as to how that's going to work out.
SPEAKER_00: But he's worthy of your trust and of your faith.
SPEAKER_00: Everything that happens to you as a child of God has been filtered through Romans 8.28.
SPEAKER_00: Everything.
SPEAKER_00: Go look at your yard, watch the wind blow.
SPEAKER_00: Not a blade of grass moves without the hand of our provident God.
SPEAKER_00: And we can look at that and we can know and we can trust that nothing that happens to us is outside of his goodwill.
SPEAKER_00: And never in scripture, never does he tell you that you're gonna find out about it before glory.
SPEAKER_00: Never.
SPEAKER_00: That's where we struggle so much.
SPEAKER_00: That you need an explanation as to why something's happened, that you need answers.
SPEAKER_00: That's Satan.
SPEAKER_00: That's Satan tempting you with the twisting of Psalm 91.
SPEAKER_00: God's proven that he's trustworthy.
SPEAKER_00: God's proven that he's covenantal.
SPEAKER_00: God's proven that he's good.
SPEAKER_00: And I promise you, in glory, you will have every answer.
SPEAKER_00: We see the impetus of this truth shine brightly in our Christians and brothers and sisters, our forefathers that have gone before us.
SPEAKER_00: Church history shows us what this faith looks like on the ground.
SPEAKER_00: In the year 249, a horrific plague swept the Roman Empire, the plague of Cyprian killing at its height thousands a day.
SPEAKER_00: Dionysius, a pastor, the pastor at Alexandria, one of our early church fathers, recorded that the pagans were thrusting away their own sick at the first sign of fever, and they fled.
SPEAKER_00: But the Christians stayed.
SPEAKER_00: They nursed the dying, they closed the eyes of the dead, and many of them caught the disease themselves and died.
SPEAKER_00: And Dionysius says the church honored those deaths as a kind of martyrdom.
SPEAKER_00: Notice in Psalm 91, it does not make us invulnerable.
SPEAKER_00: It made it makes us unafraid.
SPEAKER_00: It made those who have gone before us unafraid.
SPEAKER_00: They were free from the tyranny of the fear of death itself, and that freedom turned into love for their neighbors.
SPEAKER_00: Go and tend to the sick at risk of dying yourself in the name of Christ Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And what history tells us is this act turned an empire's head toward Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And in less than a hundred years, an empire that persecuted Christianity declared Christianity.
SPEAKER_00: Twelve centuries later, when the plague struck Wittenberg that we talked about last week last week in 1527, Martin Luther faced the same question.
SPEAKER_00: And he wrote a little tract.
SPEAKER_00: I told you last week about the song.
SPEAKER_00: We sang it today, Mighty Fortresses Our God.
SPEAKER_00: But he also wrote a little tract called Whether One May Flee from a Deadly Plague.
SPEAKER_00: And I want you to just wrap your mind around this scenario because we don't live in that.
SPEAKER_00: You know, um we just have a weird society.
SPEAKER_00: We just have a weird culture.
SPEAKER_00: You don't believe me?
SPEAKER_00: How do we respond to COVID?
SPEAKER_00: I'm a hospice physician.
SPEAKER_00: I I took care of people dying from COVID on their deathbeds, and we kept their families out.
SPEAKER_00: Because I didn't, but as a society, we did.
SPEAKER_00: This is just so foreign to us.
SPEAKER_00: So he writes this track, Whether One May Flee from a Deadly Plague.
SPEAKER_00: Deadly Plague Hits Tyler.
SPEAKER_00: What do you do?
SPEAKER_00: What how what what do you do as a church?
SPEAKER_00: How do you organize?
SPEAKER_00: Beacons, how do you organize?
SPEAKER_00: Elders, what do you do?
SPEAKER_00: Church members, what are you gonna do?
SPEAKER_00: Deadly plague hits, ravishes our community.
SPEAKER_00: How are you gonna respond?
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna leave it up to the government, we're gonna leave it up to we've got hospitals in town, they're overflowing.
SPEAKER_00: This is what the church was faced with.
SPEAKER_00: They were faced with like real, real things.
SPEAKER_00: And maybe we should just be faced with those things.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe that's what would cause us to turn it around.
SPEAKER_00: I'm like I'm digressing a little bit, but at what point at what point do we just say so much of our earthly comforts have numbed our souls?
SPEAKER_00: To where we bicker about things that are stupid?
SPEAKER_00: To where we as a as a church just lose sight of the Great Commission.
SPEAKER_00: You know what is it what does it mean to be a church?
SPEAKER_00: What does it mean to make disciples?
SPEAKER_00: What does it mean to to do these things?
SPEAKER_00: Well, Martin Luther knew.
SPEAKER_00: So he writes this tract, whether one may flee from a deadly plague.
SPEAKER_00: And his answer was full of sanctified common sense.
SPEAKER_00: Use medicine, air out the house.
SPEAKER_00: So he wasn't running away from the he wasn't saying, you know, science is bad, you know, ignore them.
SPEAKER_00: Hey, take the medicine, air out your house, do all the things they're telling you to do.
SPEAKER_00: Don't tempt God by being reckless.
SPEAKER_00: You know, don't go to somebody with COVID and say, cough on me.
SPEAKER_00: That's not what you do.
SPEAKER_00: But Luther himself stayed, turned his home into a ward for the sick, and wrote, I shall ask God mercifully to protect us, and I shall serve my neighbor, and if God should wish to take me, he knows where to find me.
SPEAKER_00: What would happen if that boldness existed in this church?
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna fulfill the Great Commission.
SPEAKER_00: And if and if God wants to take me, He knows where to find me.
SPEAKER_00: That's Psalm 91, verse 2 in working clothes.
SPEAKER_00: That's what it looks like on the ground.
SPEAKER_00: My refuge and my fortress, my God in whom I trust.
SPEAKER_00: I can go into the pit and do the ministry of the gospel and not be afraid.
SPEAKER_00: Thirdly, pray this psalm.
SPEAKER_00: God is inviting you to call on him in times of trouble.
SPEAKER_00: As powerful and sovereign as our God is, we should equally see in Scripture that he is tender towards his people.
SPEAKER_00: These two truths about God are so great.
SPEAKER_00: He is so powerful and yet he is so tender.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 15 reveals the tender voice of God as a promise in the Psalm.
SPEAKER_00: When he calls to me, I will answer him.
SPEAKER_00: I will be with him in trouble.
SPEAKER_00: Notice God does not say, I will keep him out of all trouble.
SPEAKER_00: He says, I will be with him in it.
SPEAKER_00: That is the promise that holds when the biopsy comes back wrong, when the marriage is straining, when the child wonders, when termination comes, when you get the heartbreaking and life-changing phone call.
SPEAKER_00: That promise does not go away.
SPEAKER_00: I will be with you in times of trouble.
SPEAKER_00: The Almighty does not always build a wall around the trouble for us.
SPEAKER_00: He walks into the trouble and he stands beside you in it, just as surely, in the same manner, with no less power than.
SPEAKER_00: We see the fourth man in the fiery furnace.
SPEAKER_00: Dear Christian, when did you last actually call on him?
SPEAKER_00: You have this at your disposal.
SPEAKER_00: When did you last call on the Lord who saved Daniel from the lion's den?
SPEAKER_00: It's the same God.
SPEAKER_00: You don't worship a lesser powerful God.
SPEAKER_00: And I will tell you, you are not less important than Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednica.
SPEAKER_00: You are a child of God.
SPEAKER_00: If you are in Christ, you are a child of God.
SPEAKER_00: Pray to Him.
SPEAKER_00: Ask Him to be with you.
SPEAKER_00: This Psalm is not merely to be studied, it is to be prayed.
SPEAKER_00: Take verse 2 on your lips this week.
SPEAKER_00: I will say to the Lord, My refuge and my fortress, my God in whom I trust.
SPEAKER_00: Pray this psalm regularly.
SPEAKER_00: You don't even have to cleverly rephrase it.
SPEAKER_00: Are y'all tempted to do that sometimes?
SPEAKER_00: Like I want to pray something in scripture, but I feel like I need to rephrase it.
SPEAKER_00: Otherwise, I'm like, uh, copyright, what's it called?
SPEAKER_00: Plagiarism.
SPEAKER_00: There's no plagiarism when you're praying scripture.
SPEAKER_00: Brothers and sisters, many of you in this room know what it feels like when you don't even know what to pray.
SPEAKER_00: Just turn here and pray this.
SPEAKER_00: It's what it's here for.
SPEAKER_00: You can read this psalm word for word as a prayer to our tending, tender, and loving Heavenly Father.
SPEAKER_00: Lastly, lift your eyes to the final horizon.
SPEAKER_00: With long life I will satisfy him in verse 16.
SPEAKER_00: Under the old covenant, that meant long length of days in the land, but in Christ, the promise then blossoms into its full flower.
SPEAKER_00: What does that promise mean in Christ?
SPEAKER_00: It's fulfillment of God's promises to his people, not merely long life, everlasting life.
SPEAKER_00: Not merely rescue from the plague or the arrow.
SPEAKER_00: You need more than rescuing from a plague and an arrow.
SPEAKER_00: You need salvation.
SPEAKER_00: What this offers us is full, final bodily resurrection salvation.
SPEAKER_00: Every believer who has ever died of pestilence, every believer who has ever died at the uh at the tip of an arrow or a spear.
SPEAKER_00: Believers die.
SPEAKER_00: And should the Lord not return soon, all of us in here will die.
SPEAKER_00: But because no evil shall be allowed to befall you, it's finally measured not in the graveside, but in the resurrection.
SPEAKER_00: Paul stands on this very ground in Romans 8.
SPEAKER_00: Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?
SPEAKER_00: Shall tribulation or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?
SPEAKER_00: No, in all these things, we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.
SPEAKER_00: The sword may touch the body, but it cannot come near you, the real you who is hidden with Christ in God.
SPEAKER_00: So take heart, brothers and sisters, and this is the message for those of us who are in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: If you are not in Christ, you have no right to this.
SPEAKER_00: If you are in Christ, neither death nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
SPEAKER_00: They may kill the body, but you are untouchable in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: So come back with me to the beginning.
SPEAKER_00: Let's go back to that shoemaker's shop in Southwark.
SPEAKER_00: So what studied Spurgeon during that cholera year was not a magic sentence in a window.
SPEAKER_00: It was the God behind that sentence.
SPEAKER_00: The God who had already kept every part of Psalm 91 for his own son, Jesus Christ, to the death, and saw him out the other side in his resurrection, and who is therefore utterly trustworthy to keep the young 20-year-old preacher Charles Spurgeon, whether he lived or whether he died.
SPEAKER_00: And that is the question that the Psalm leaves every one of us with this morning.
SPEAKER_00: Where do you dwell?
SPEAKER_00: Not where do you visit when you're frightened?
SPEAKER_00: But where do you live?
SPEAKER_00: The promises of the Psalm are not for those who admire God from a distance.
SPEAKER_00: They have no partaking in these promises.
SPEAKER_00: They are for those who have made the most high their dwelling place.
SPEAKER_00: And there is only one door into that shelter, the Lord Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: The man who did this perfectly, who dwelt there perfectly, who is crushed so that the serpent would be crushed, who died and rose again so that his people could hide in him forever.
SPEAKER_00: So this is where I would say if you are not in Christ this morning, you are standing in a very dangerous open field, exposed to judgment far worse than any pestilence, far worse than death itself.
SPEAKER_00: And I would beg and plead of you this morning to flee to the refuge of Almighty God in Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: He has never turned away a single soul that has run to him.
SPEAKER_00: Be forgiven of your sins by confessing them to God, repenting of them, declaring Christ as your Lord and Savior, and believing in your heart that God raised you from the dead.
SPEAKER_00: Do it now.
SPEAKER_00: There's nothing to it.
SPEAKER_00: You don't need me.
SPEAKER_00: You don't need a pastor.
SPEAKER_00: Do that on your own now.
SPEAKER_00: I'd love to talk to you about it after the service, but you don't need a mediator.
SPEAKER_00: Christ is sufficient.
SPEAKER_00: He is your mediator.
SPEAKER_00: Run to him now.
SPEAKER_00: And again, church, if you are in Christ, then lift up your head.
SPEAKER_00: A thousand may fall at your side, ten thousand at your right hand, but underneath you today, this week, the rest of your life, and forever in Christ are the everlasting loving arms of God.
SPEAKER_00: And He is mighty, and He is tender, a strong and mighty fortress, and a tender loving father.
SPEAKER_00: Let's pray together.