Speaker 1: Hello everyone.
Speaker 1: This is Pastor Damian.
Speaker 1: You're listening to Sermon Audio from New City, orlando.
Speaker 1: At New City we believe all of us need all of Jesus for all of life.
Speaker 1: For more resources, visit our website at newcityorlandocom.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening.
Speaker 1: Eternal God, the grass withers and the flower fades, but your word will stand forever.
Speaker 1: Holy Spirit, help us to love and trust your word.
Speaker 1: Through Jesus Christ, we pray Amen.
Speaker 1: Today's scripture reading is Psalm 91.
Speaker 1: Please remain standing, if you are able.
Speaker 1: He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will abide in the shadow of the Almighty.
Speaker 1: 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 1: He will cover you with his pinions and under his wings you will find refuge.
Speaker 1: His faithfulness is a shield and buckler.
Speaker 1: 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 1: A thousand may fall at your side, ten thousand at your right hand, but it will not come near you.
Speaker 1: You will only look with your eyes and see the recompense of the wicked, because you have made the Lord your dwelling place, the Most High, who is my refuge.
Speaker 1: No evil shall be allowed to befall you, no plague come near your tent, for he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways.
Speaker 1: On their hands, they will bear you up lest you strike your foot against a stone.
Speaker 1: You will tread on the lion and the adder, the young lion and the serpent you will trample underfoot.
Speaker 1: Because he holds fast to me in love, I will deliver him.
Speaker 1: I will protect him.
Speaker 1: Because he holds fast to me in love, I will deliver him.
Speaker 1: I will protect him because he knows my name.
Speaker 1: When he calls to me, I will answer him.
Speaker 1: I will be with him in trouble.
Speaker 1: I will rescue him and honor him With long life.
Speaker 1: I will satisfy him and show him my salvation.
Speaker 2: This is God's word him and show him my salvation.
Speaker 2: This is God's word.
Speaker 2: Well, I said something similar last time I preached, but it is.
Speaker 2: I just got to say it again.
Speaker 2: It is so good, it's so sweet to be up here and hear your voices just washing over me, and there are plenty of seats up front here.
Speaker 2: If you guys ever want to move up front, you could do that too.
Speaker 2: But just, I just want to say I had the thought this is a glimpse Every time.
Speaker 2: We had the thought this is a glimpse every time we gather Sunday morning.
Speaker 2: This is a glimpse into your future.
Speaker 2: I thought that was just.
Speaker 2: It's amazing.
Speaker 2: This is a glimpse into our future.
Speaker 2: Well, a few years back, google unveiled an ad called Dear Sophie.
Speaker 2: Some of you may remember it, and actually it was more than a few years.
Speaker 2: It was probably closer to a decade now, which is crazy, but it was an effort.
Speaker 2: It was an ad that sought to bring some humanity or warmth to this tech company, and the ad was about a father's love for his daughter and the digital scrapbook that he made with the use or help of Google services.
Speaker 2: So this father would draft a new email with every new life event for his daughter, and it would start something like, dear Sophie today you were scared because you rode your first roller coaster.
Speaker 2: Dear Sophie, we moved into our first home today and you were so happy.
Speaker 2: Dear Sophie, today we felt helpless.
Speaker 2: You spiked a fever and ended up in the hospital.
Speaker 2: In a similar way, the Psalms are God's heartfelt chronicle of our human experience.
Speaker 2: They're his scrapbook to us.
Speaker 2: They're God's messages to his sons and his daughters about what life will be like for us, and even about what life could be like for us, and even about what life could be like for us if we were to make him our refuge.
Speaker 2: We'll find messages of fear and lament.
Speaker 2: We'll find messages of happiness and joy and of encouragement and comfort, but they'll all fall under the broader category of wisdom, because they all come from God, and God cares about how we experience this life.
Speaker 2: More importantly, he cares about how we experience him.
Speaker 2: So when we come to the Psalms, we find notes from God himself about what life is like, about what he's like.
Speaker 2: And so this morning, when we come to Psalm 91, if we were to read it as an entry in God's scrapbook to us, it might read this way Dear son, dear daughter, today you trusted me and you were happy and you were safe.
Speaker 2: Now, there's not a whole lot that we know about the author of this psalm.
Speaker 2: If you have your Bibles in front of you, you'll notice that there's no name listed next to the title, and when that happens, scholars usually attribute it to the nearest psalm that preceded it, so in this case, I believe it would be Moses.
Speaker 2: The Septuagint, which is the Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures, has David listed as the author, but that could just mean that David composed it and added into the list of Psalms.
Speaker 2: We're not really sure, but regardless of who it originally belonged to, it now belongs to us.
Speaker 2: This Psalm belongs to you and I, and the one thing that this Psalm makes clear is that no one will ever care for you like God can, which is another way of saying no one will ever care for you like Jesus, and these are words we need to hear because, if we're honest with ourselves, these are words we often have a hard time believing.
Speaker 2: Now, there are a number of reasons for this.
Speaker 2: I can think of at least five, but I want to mention two, and the first is that we're pretty good at caring for ourselves.
Speaker 2: We're pretty good at caring for ourselves.
Speaker 2: We're creatures who were made for refuge, but who seek refuge in all the wrong places.
Speaker 2: We acquire things money, jobs, homes, people even and as we gather stuff, what we tell ourselves is that we're secure, that we're safe.
Speaker 2: Now, stuff isn't bad per se.
Speaker 2: Homes are good, money's good, we need these things to live, but we're really good at making stuff everything.
Speaker 2: Actually, jesus says in Luke's gospel that unless you're willing to give up your stuff, you don't really know him.
Speaker 2: So the first is we're really good at caring for ourselves.
Speaker 2: But the second reason we we find it hard to conceptualize God as a refuge is our own experiences of suffering, and what that sounds like in real life might be something like this what kind of refuge would allow this to happen to me?
Speaker 2: You can fill in the blank.
Speaker 2: What kind of refuge would allow a scan to be lit up like that?
Speaker 2: What kind of refuge would allow for such a poor prognosis?
Speaker 2: What kind of refuge would keep me from having children?
Speaker 2: What kind of refuge would keep me so financially strapped?
Speaker 2: I barely have two nickels to rub together.
Speaker 2: And so when we come to this idea of God as refuge, immediately we're confronted with the reality of pain.
Speaker 2: So the real question behind can I trust God as my refuge is?
Speaker 2: Really, can I trust God with my pain?
Speaker 2: And that's what the psalmist is trying to answer for us this morning, and his answer to that is yes, you can, you absolutely can.
Speaker 2: And so this morning we're going to look at refuge from three or angles, if you will.
Speaker 2: First, the path of refuge.
Speaker 2: Second, the promises of refuge.
Speaker 2: And third, the person of refuge.
Speaker 2: So the first thing the psalmist shows us is that there is a path to refuge, and there are really two things that he's concerned with.
Speaker 2: If you have your Bible or a phone, you can pull that out now and follow along with me.
Speaker 2: I'll be moving through the text, hopefully not too quickly, but I'm going to read verses 1 to 2 of Psalm 91.
Speaker 2: He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will abide in the shadow of the Almighty.
Speaker 2: In the shadow of the Almighty, I will say to the Lord, my refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust.
Speaker 2: Okay, so the first thing that we notice in this psalm is that there's a change of tenses If you look between the first verse and the second verse.
Speaker 2: The first verse is in third person, the second verse is in first person.
Speaker 2: It goes.
Speaker 2: The psalmist appears to be saying the one who spends time with God will know him as a shelter and refuge.
Speaker 2: He will experience his rest.
Speaker 2: That's what he's saying in verse one.
Speaker 2: And then another voice comes in and responds, as if to say great, I want that.
Speaker 2: I want God as my refuge, I want to experience the Lord that way.
Speaker 2: And so the first thing we find concerning I want God as my refuge, I want to experience the Lord that way.
Speaker 2: And so the first thing we find concerning the path to refuge is that we actually have to work backwards with verse two first, which is surrender.
Speaker 2: The path to refuge begins with surrender.
Speaker 2: It begins with these words I will say to the Lord, I will trust the Lord.
Speaker 2: The second thing we find and this is where I want to land on this point for this morning is that it's sustained by intimacy.
Speaker 2: So the path begins with surrender, but it's sustained by intimacy.
Speaker 2: The psalmist says he who dwells in the shelter of the Most High.
Speaker 2: So here's the secret to the path of refuge If you want to know God, this is all you have to know.
Speaker 2: Say you want to and live like you mean it.
Speaker 2: Say you want to and live like you mean it Isn't that amazing.
Speaker 2: It's really that simple.
Speaker 2: That's how simple God has made it.
Speaker 2: Now it's a little tongue in cheek, but I think the psalm is as well.
Speaker 2: As we move through it, I think you'll see and what we'll see in a moment is in verses 3 to 13 that the psalmist is about to list off a load of promises that are yours if you make God your refuge.
Speaker 2: But he doesn't want you to be fooled.
Speaker 2: That's why we have verses 1 and 2.
Speaker 2: By beginning with this encouragement to dwell with God in the opening verses and then listing off all the promises that we're about to look at in a moment, he's basically saying this don't expect to experience God in these ways if you're not willing to live with him.
Speaker 2: Charles Spurgeon says of verse one I think the quote will be thrown up behind me so you can follow along.
Speaker 2: It's amazing.
Speaker 2: It gets at this idea of dwelling with God, the difficulty of dwelling with God and the promises that come along with it.
Speaker 2: He says the promises in this psalm are not for every believer but for those who live in close fellowship with God.
Speaker 2: Every child of God looks towards the inner sanctuary and mercy seat.
Speaker 2: That's important.
Speaker 2: What I don't want you to hear me saying is that if you don't dwell with God with intensity and with rhythmic intimacy, that he's somehow not your refuge.
Speaker 2: Every child of God, every child who says I trust you, gets Jesus as his refuge.
Speaker 2: But he goes on to say Christ and Christ in him become possessors of rare and special benefits which are missed by those who follow from a distance.
Speaker 2: When the psalmist begins by saying he who dwells in the shelter of the most high, what he is inviting you to is a life of not following God from a distance.
Speaker 2: That's what's on offer.
Speaker 2: There's too much at stake.
Speaker 2: There's too much that Jesus wants to be for you right now that you'll miss out on if your friendship is one of occasional approaches.
Speaker 2: Jesus actually says something similar in John 15.
Speaker 2: He says abide in my love.
Speaker 2: And then he goes on to say you are my friends if you keep my commands, which is another way of saying pursue a life of intimacy and you'll know what it's like to be my friend and you'll experience all the benefits that come with it.
Speaker 2: But notice what Jesus is not saying in John 15, when he says you are my friends if you do what I command.
Speaker 2: He's not saying.
Speaker 2: He doesn't say you are saved if you keep my commands.
Speaker 2: He says you are my friend, which means Jesus is objectively your refuge.
Speaker 2: When you surrender your life to him, no matter how imperfectly we follow him, he will always be our refuge.
Speaker 2: But what the word friend is meant to capture is this Jesus doesn't wanna be the one who just saves you.
Speaker 2: He wants to be the one who knows you better than anybody else.
Speaker 2: He doesn't just wanna save you, he wants to know you, he wants to love you.
Speaker 2: But he also knows that dwelling isn't easy, and we know that dwelling isn't easy.
Speaker 2: And we know that dwelling isn't easy.
Speaker 2: This week my wife and I were on our patio I had just gotten home from work and my kids are going through this homeschooling astronomy lesson where they're sort of reciting the planets in order.
Speaker 2: I had memorized it this week and I already forgot it, so now I can't share the planets with you.
Speaker 2: I was going to impress you guys and list all of them in order.
Speaker 2: I don't know how impressive that would be.
Speaker 2: In my mind it seemed impressive, but my wife started asking them some questions and so she led off with this one.
Speaker 2: She said girls, what is the closest planet to the sun To which my three girls replied Mercury.
Speaker 2: And then I wanted to get on this fun.
Speaker 2: So girls replied Mercury.
Speaker 2: And then I wanted to get on this fun.
Speaker 2: So she asked another question and she said, girls, what is the hottest planet?
Speaker 2: And I shouted Mercury.
Speaker 2: And I was wrong, because it's not the hottest planet.
Speaker 2: I hope I'm not alone in that in here.
Speaker 2: I hope you guys would have also thought the same thing.
Speaker 2: It's actually Venus.
Speaker 2: Venus is the hottest planet, but it's not the closest to the sun.
Speaker 2: And the reason is it got me thinking.
Speaker 2: I was sitting there.
Speaker 2: I was like can I use this for a sermon illustration?
Speaker 2: I think I can and the answer is yes, I could.
Speaker 2: So the atmosphere of Mercury is very thin, so the rays from the sun come in and just go back out as easily and they don't get trapped, so there's no heat.
Speaker 2: We could use some of that right now in Orlando.
Speaker 2: It's very hot out Anyway, just as Mercury's.
Speaker 2: This is what I was thinking about as I was pondering my lack of astronomical knowledge.
Speaker 2: Just as Mercury's proximity to the sun doesn't make it the hottest planet, our proximity to spiritual things don't make us friends of Jesus.
Speaker 2: We can be really close to spiritual things and not be very spiritual.
Speaker 2: And Jesus himself tells us this.
Speaker 2: He says to the Pharisees, the people who thought they were closest to God woe to you, for you make long prayers for show.
Speaker 2: He says woe to you, for you care about the outside and not the inside.
Speaker 2: Jesus is warning us and this should feel kind of scary Jesus is warning us that we can feel furthest we can actually be, excuse me, furthest from the things that we feel closest to.
Speaker 2: We can deceive ourselves.
Speaker 2: We're pretty good at doing that.
Speaker 2: But Jesus knows how hard dwelling can be.
Speaker 2: And so he gives us two things he gives us his spirit and he gives us each other.
Speaker 2: He gives us his spirit because his spirit is the only hope we have in becoming like him.
Speaker 2: You can't dwell with Jesus apart from his spirit.
Speaker 2: You just can't.
Speaker 2: And even if you thought you could, no amount of spiritless dwelling would ever make you into the kind of person that Jesus wants you to be.
Speaker 2: It would all be on your own effort and very much alone.
Speaker 2: Paul says in Galatians that the fruit of the spirit, which is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, fruitfulness, gentleness, self-control he says all those things come from the Spirit.
Speaker 2: And in the very next verse.
Speaker 2: He says these things belong to those who know Jesus Christ.
Speaker 2: These things belong to those who know him as their friend.
Speaker 2: Jesus gives us his Spirit, because we can't be true friends without it or without him, I should say.
Speaker 2: But Jesus also gives us each other.
Speaker 2: Jesus gives us one another.
Speaker 2: He gives us a multitude of brothers and sisters In Matthew 19,.
Speaker 2: I might have even mentioned this chapter in my last sermon, but it's one of my favorites and you'll hear me say it often if you spend any time around me.
Speaker 2: Matthew 19,.
Speaker 2: There's this story of this rich young man who comes to Jesus and says what must I do?
Speaker 2: I'm gonna paraphrase it says what must I do to be your friend?
Speaker 2: And Jesus says sell everything and follow me.
Speaker 2: And he turns around.
Speaker 2: But Peter says Jesus, we've done this.
Speaker 2: What do we get?
Speaker 2: And Jesus says I tell you truly, there is no one who has left house, or brothers or sisters, or mother or father or children or lands, for my sake in the gospel, who will not receive a hundredfold now, in this time.
Speaker 2: Jesus isn't saying that the family we get is some future heavenly reality.
Speaker 2: It's a now.
Speaker 2: It's a here and now reality and we need to live like that.
Speaker 2: The other thing is Jesus assumes that the most costly thing we'll leave behind is relational and familial.
Speaker 2: He just assumes that.
Speaker 2: But if we follow Jesus, he promises that we will not be relationally worse off.
Speaker 2: So here's what Jesus is saying.
Speaker 2: He's saying when we follow him, we get each other.
Speaker 2: And this corporate family is a key ingredient to our private dwelling.
Speaker 2: Jude puts it this way.
Speaker 2: He says keep one another in the love of God.
Speaker 2: That's our task, that's our sole responsibility here on earth is to keep one another in the love of God.
Speaker 2: In other words, make sure your brother or your sister is dwelling with Jesus, are friends with Jesus.
Speaker 2: And one of the ways we do that around here is through communities and circles.
Speaker 2: But you could also throw the all of life guide in there, where twice a year, we take a moment to pause and slow down and take inventory of our lives and we ask ourselves a question am I treating Jesus like a friend?
Speaker 2: How well am I actually dwelling with him?
Speaker 2: And it's an important question to ask and it's an important question to share with each other.
Speaker 2: I'll end this point here.
Speaker 2: Jesus doesn't just command our dwelling because he needs it.
Speaker 2: He doesn't.
Speaker 2: He commands our dwelling because we need it.
Speaker 2: We need Jesus as our friend.
Speaker 2: There's no way need it.
Speaker 2: We need Jesus as our friend, there's no way around it.
Speaker 2: And because dwelling is his selfless invitation to us, because it's him saying, no, actually, I want to spend time with you.
Speaker 2: We can trust him that dwelling is for our good.
Speaker 2: So the path to refuge begins with surrender, but it's sustained by dwelling or a life of intimacy with Jesus.
Speaker 2: But on this path linking back to that Spurgeon quote Jesus also wants to give us gifts.
Speaker 2: He wants to give us those rare and special gifts that you only get when you walk that path with him as a friend.
Speaker 2: In other words, there are promises that come along with making God our refuge.
Speaker 2: I didn't know that our call to worship this morning was going to be from Ruth.
Speaker 2: Maybe I should have.
Speaker 2: I didn't, but I thought about Ruth when I was writing this sermon.
Speaker 2: Ruth and refuge are synonymous with one another.
Speaker 2: Ruth, just to give you a quick sort of summary of the story she leaves behind her land and people and country and follows Naomi to go to her country and to worship her God.
Speaker 2: And she finds this gentleman there named Boaz, who ultimately becomes her refuge.
Speaker 2: And Boaz says this to her to Ruth's willingness to leave Boaz says Yahweh, repay you for what you have done and a full reward be given you by the Lord, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come to take refuge.
Speaker 2: God rewards us when we choose to make him our refuge.
Speaker 2: And do you know how he rewarded Ruth?
Speaker 2: The refuge that Ruth sought, god gave to her in the person of Jesus Christ.
Speaker 2: Jesus Christ, the Messiah, came from Ruth's line.
Speaker 2: Ruth was David's great-grandmother.
Speaker 2: Someone who really had no business with these people made her way in, was welcomed by the love of God through Boaz and played an integral part in the story of refuge.
Speaker 2: I can imagine David probably sat under his great-grandmother, ruth's feet and listened to stories of refuge from her.
Speaker 2: So when David or the psalmist speaks about refuge, we can trust him.
Speaker 2: So what are the promises of refuge?
Speaker 2: I just want to list off a few real quick and then I want to say a couple things about them.
Speaker 2: If you look at verses 3 to 13, that's where we'll be.
Speaker 2: Verse 3, first promise of refuge is deliverance, it says.
Speaker 2: The psalmist is likening us to a baby bird here.
Speaker 2: We're helpless, we need covering and, by default, if we are the baby bird, there is a mother bird who is protecting us, and this imagery is not new as we come to it in Psalm 91.
Speaker 2: It's all throughout the Old Testament where God regularly defines himself as a mother bird who would come to his chicks, so to speak, and cover them and protect them.
Speaker 2: So the first promise is deliverance.
Speaker 2: If we walk this path of refuge, god promises to deliver us.
Speaker 2: The fourth is in verse or, excuse me, the second is in verse four.
Speaker 2: He will cover you with his pinions, which is just another way of saying I will put my wings around you.
Speaker 2: That's the promise of protection.
Speaker 2: Third, the promise of peace is in verse five.
Speaker 2: You will not fear the terror of the night, nor the arrow that flies by day.
Speaker 2: Paul says in Philippians 4, it's a peace that surpasses all understanding.
Speaker 2: This is the kind of peace that you get when you make God your refuge.
Speaker 2: Look at verses seven to eight, if you will, for a second.
Speaker 2: In verse seven to eight, the psalmist talks about nearness to suffering.
Speaker 2: Thousands will fall around you, 10,000 at your right hand, but it will not touch you.
Speaker 2: Here's what you have to know about this kind of peace.
Speaker 2: If you make God your protection, if you take the presence of God seriously, proximity to suffering will not affect your peace.
Speaker 2: If you make God your refuge.
Speaker 2: One of the promises he gives you is that proximity to suffering, nearness to suffering, will not affect your peace.
Speaker 2: You will have a calmness that you can only get when you make Jesus your friend.
Speaker 2: You get that kind of resilience through a life of dwelling.
Speaker 2: Now, I titled this point Promises of Refuge, but there's really just one promise of refuge.
Speaker 2: I listed off a few there.
Speaker 2: There's some more that come in verses 14 to 16.
Speaker 2: But there's really only one promise of refuge and we find that in verse 15.
Speaker 2: Look at verse 15.
Speaker 2: It reads when he calls to me, I will answer, I will be with him.
Speaker 2: The promise of refuge, the promise of refuge from which all other promises of God are subsumed and come is the promise of presence.
Speaker 2: The promise of refuge is the promise of presence.
Speaker 2: We need deliverance, we need protection, we need and desire peace, but we don't get any of those things apart from the presence of God.
Speaker 2: You can try all day long to manufacture those and, as I mentioned earlier, we're pretty good at it, but it won't last.
Speaker 2: You need the presence of Jesus to get the promises of Jesus.
Speaker 2: Now you may have noticed that in these verses the tone of the psalm changes.
Speaker 2: Verse one and two feel a little bit different from verses three to 13.
Speaker 2: Maybe it's fair to say that, not so much the tone, because it's still confident.
Speaker 2: You still get this underlying tone of confidence, but the content changes All of a sudden.
Speaker 2: We're talking a lot about hard things, and there's a reason for this.
Speaker 2: It's a reminder to us that this psalm is set in the real world.
Speaker 2: This psalm is set in the world we live in.
Speaker 2: Um.
Speaker 2: I was on youtube the other day, just wasting time, just in full transparency, um, and I came across a Bob Ross video.
Speaker 2: Okay, this psalmist knows that we don't live in a Bob Ross world.
Speaker 2: There aren't happy little accidents everywhere we walk, or happy little clouds, happy little trees.
Speaker 2: This psalm knows about the fact that there are dark places in this world.
Speaker 2: He's not trying to cover that up.
Speaker 2: Places in this world.
Speaker 2: He's not trying to cover that up.
Speaker 2: And no place is darker than death.
Speaker 2: No place that will go is darker than death.
Speaker 2: And yet even death is one of the paths that Jesus promises to guide us on.
Speaker 2: Notice that it's not only the tone that changes in these verses, but in verses 14 to 16, the psalm goes from talking.
Speaker 2: This is one of the coolest things of the psalm, by the way.
Speaker 2: If you do have a Bible or phone, I would suggest you get it out, because this is so amazing.
Speaker 2: Not only does the tone change, but the psalm goes from talking about God to verses 14 to 16, god talking about us.
Speaker 2: An entirely new voice comes into the equation.
Speaker 2: Verse 3 to 13,.
Speaker 2: He will deliver, he will protect, he will be with.
Speaker 2: This is the psalmist giving a testimony of Jesus to his faithfulness.
Speaker 2: Verse 14, I will deliver, I will protect, I will be with God interrupts the psalmist to confirm that he is the kind of God that the psalmist is making him out to be.
Speaker 2: He says yes, this is true, this is who I am, and it's interesting at this point in the psalm, where the psalmist is reflecting on the dark things of the world, that God himself interrupts to comfort him.
Speaker 2: It's a reminder that it's often the hardest times in life when God's presence can feel most sweet to us.
Speaker 2: God doesn't just make it so the night doesn't exist anymore.
Speaker 2: He doesn't always remove the darkness from our lives.
Speaker 2: He can, and sometimes he does, and praise him for that, but he doesn't always remove the darkness.
Speaker 2: He doesn't take away the arrows that fly by day.
Speaker 2: To use the language of the Psalmist.
Speaker 2: That's often what we want him to do, but that's not always what he does.
Speaker 2: Actually, he does something even better he gives us himself.
Speaker 2: In the midst of all those things, if we're honest with ourselves, the one thing we want when we're really in the darkness, when the arrows are flying, the one thing we really want is Jesus.
Speaker 2: Even if we ask for deliverance and protection and peace and for it all to go away, at the end of the day, even if all that went away, we'd still need and want Jesus.
Speaker 2: The only way those things really truly permanently go away is if you have Jesus.
Speaker 2: We don't sit in the terror of the night alone.
Speaker 2: That's the promise of this psalm.
Speaker 2: So let the darkest moments of your life become the moments when you're most aware of the presence of God.
Speaker 2: And here's why I was thinking about the doctrine of our union with Christ recently, and here's why this matters.
Speaker 2: There are places in life that we can't go with each other.
Speaker 2: There are places in life that we can't go with each other, but where we can go with Jesus, you can get real practical with it.
Speaker 2: You can't take someone with you into an MRI machine.
Speaker 2: Trust me, if I could, I would.
Speaker 2: I hate those things.
Speaker 2: I had to have one like a month ago.
Speaker 2: You can't do that.
Speaker 2: More importantly, you can't take someone with you into death.
Speaker 2: You have to walk into death, through death, by yourself, but not alone, because Jesus has defeated death and gone through death and come out on the other side.
Speaker 2: He is the only person who can go through that with you.
Speaker 2: When Jesus says at the end of Matthew's gospel, behold, I am with you until the end of the age, he means it Because he's the only person who can really say that with conviction.
Speaker 2: We can trust him.
Speaker 2: We can trust him to be present with us.
Speaker 2: There's no moment of our lives we have to face without Jesus.
Speaker 2: That's the ultimate promise.
Speaker 2: So there's a path of refuge or to refuge that we embark on through surrender and we stay on through a life of intimacy or dwelling with Jesus.
Speaker 2: There are promises that Jesus wants to give us on that path, ultimately the promise of presence.
Speaker 2: And that brings us to our third point, which is the person of refuge, and this is where we'll close, so it'd be a conclusion of sorts.
Speaker 2: Even though there's a path of refuge that we can remain on by dwelling with God, even though there are promises or rewards that we experience from God as we walk that path, we live a life of intimacy with him, we need a person of refuge, and here's why Because the only way to lay hold of those promises is in their entirety and in their fullness is if someone walks that path.
Speaker 2: For us, someone has to walk that path perfectly.
Speaker 2: The secret to the possession of God's promises of refuge is look with me at verse 14, real quick.
Speaker 2: The secret to the possession of God's promises of refuge is this hold fast to me in love.
Speaker 2: Only one person has ever done that perfectly, and so, while this psalm is about us, it's more accurately about Jesus.
Speaker 2: You and I can't walk the path of refuge perfectly.
Speaker 2: We're not very good at holding fast to God in love, but here's, hopefully, a bit of comfort.
Speaker 2: We're not very good at holding fast to God and love, but here's, hopefully, a bit of comfort.
Speaker 2: We're not alone in that.
Speaker 2: Jesus isn't in the business of shaming.
Speaker 2: He knows that we're not that good at doing that.
Speaker 2: We're not alone in that, in fact, failure is the story of humanity.
Speaker 2: Isaiah.
Speaker 2: In the book of Isaiah, god says this is the way.
Speaker 2: Walk in it.
Speaker 2: But none of God's people ever really did that well.
Speaker 2: Many of God's people haven't done that well.
Speaker 2: I don't do that well, but that's okay, because God's heart is not against his people.
Speaker 2: His heart breaks for his people and so does his sons.
Speaker 2: In Hosea, god says Israel, you have destroyed yourself.
Speaker 2: Israel, you have destroyed yourself.
Speaker 2: He says this from a place of sorrow and lament, not with a pointing finger.
Speaker 2: His heart is broken when he says that, israel, you have destroyed yourself.
Speaker 2: On his way to the cross, jesus says Jerusalem, how often I have wanted to gather you under my wings, but you would not let me.
Speaker 2: We're not good at seeking refuge.
Speaker 2: Most of the time we run from it or we manufacture it.
Speaker 2: But there is one who is perfect at it and that's Jesus.
Speaker 2: And in fact Satan uses Psalm 91 against Jesus in his wilderness temptation.
Speaker 2: Satan says if you are the son of God, throw yourself down and God will command his angels to guard.
Speaker 2: You See, what Satan wanted was evidence of God's goodness.
Speaker 2: Satan wanted tangible evidence.
Speaker 2: He wanted to see it with his own eyes.
Speaker 2: Show me that you're a refuge.
Speaker 2: Jesus said I'll take my father at his word.
Speaker 2: We're a lot more like that than we'd like to think.
Speaker 2: Not like Jesus, like the enemy.
Speaker 2: We want tangible evidence of God's goodness and refuge in our life, and when we don't get that, it's a problem.
Speaker 2: But Jesus said I'll take him at his word and that was Jesus' heart in all of life.
Speaker 2: And because of that, verses 14 to 16 are first about Jesus and then about us.
Speaker 2: Because Jesus held fast to the Father in love and brought us under his wings, god will satisfy us with long life.
Speaker 2: The last verse he will show us his salvation.
Speaker 2: In the late 80s there were a series of forest fires in Yellowstone National Park and, as I understand it, they started out controlled, but then they soon got out of hand and they caused a lot of damage.
Speaker 2: Out controlled, but then they soon got out of hand and they caused a lot of damage.
Speaker 2: There was another story that quickly was linked to National Geographic that had to do with these fires and it was about a mother bird who rescued her babies.
Speaker 2: It was actually disproven.
Speaker 2: So as I was thinking about this, I was like this isn't going to bode well for my illustration, I think we could still use it.
Speaker 2: There was a mother bird who rescued her chicks in this fire.
Speaker 2: One of the park rangers, though, said that the behavior that this bird showed would not have been inconsistent with the kind of species of bird that it was.
Speaker 2: So even if it didn't happen, it could have happened, so we're going to go with that.
Speaker 2: After these fires I should also mention it's like a parable from a farm in 1945.
Speaker 2: I think there's more credit there, so we'll go with that one.
Speaker 2: After these fires, forest rangers began to hike up the mountain to basically assess the damage.
Speaker 2: There were lots of ashes, broken down trees, as you would imagine, a lot of ruin, and one of the rangers found a bird literally petrified in ashes.
Speaker 2: It was perched almost like a statue next to a tree, and it was eerie even disgusting, you might say.
Speaker 2: And this ranger took a stick and sort of poked over the bird just to sort of, maybe like, put it to rest.
Speaker 2: Finally, when he did that, three little birds came out from beneath the wings of this petrified mother and scurried off.
Speaker 2: The mother was keenly aware of the impending disaster of these fires, and so she carried them to the base of the tree and she gathered them.
Speaker 2: She could have flown away to safety, but she refused to abandon her babies.
Speaker 2: She was willing to die so that those under the cover of her wings could live.
Speaker 2: Whether or not that illustration is true, it paints a beautiful picture of what Jesus is willing to do for us, what he has done for us.
Speaker 2: In the cross of Christ we see the most amazing refuge Jesus taking the heat of all the punishment of our sin, so that in him we can shelter and be protected.
Speaker 2: He is surely our refuge.
Speaker 2: Let's pray.
Speaker 2: He is surely our refuge.
Speaker 2: Let's pray.
Speaker 2: He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will abide in the shadow of the Almighty Father.
Speaker 2: We can often feel like the words we thank you for Jesus feel too inadequate, but we do thank you for him.
Speaker 2: Only Jesus can provide the refuge we need from pain, from death, from ourselves.
Speaker 2: We thank you that he's the kind of refuge that doesn't go running at the first sign of trouble, but rather that he's the kind that would lay his life down for his friends, the one who knows us by name, the one who holds fast to us in love, so that we might be satisfied with long life and, as the psalmist puts it, know your salvation.
Speaker 2: We pray this in his name, jesus, our refuge, amen.
Speaker 2: Well, we come to that point in our service where we want to respond with reflection and prayer, and so I want to give you guys two questions to think about, and then I'm going to step down for two minutes or so, and you guys know the drill at this point.
Speaker 2: You know how it works.
Speaker 2: But I also want to just remind us that we don't have a table this morning.
Speaker 2: So after we have this time of reflection, josh and everyone up here will lead us in our closing song and after a couple verses, you can sort of feel free to stand, but consider making those first two or three verses part of your response to what you've just heard this morning.
Speaker 2: And so what I would ask you guys is just to consider this what are you taking refuge in right now?
Speaker 2: Simple question what are you taking refuge in right now?
Speaker 2: Whose or what wings are you coming under?
Speaker 2: It could be money, it could be job security, it could be another person.
Speaker 2: You can also simultaneously think about this what's keeping you from trusting Jesus as your refuge?
Speaker 2: What's keeping you from trusting Jesus as your refuge, or what are you telling yourself that you need from him that you feel like you currently don't have?
Speaker 2: Take the next two minutes to think about those, and then we'll stand together and worship.