Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Hello everyone.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: This is Pastor Benjamin.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You're listening to Sermon Audio from New City, Orlando.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: At New City, we long to see our Father answer the Lord's Prayer.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: For more resources, visit our website at Newcity Orlando.com.
Pastor Kenneth Dyches: Go ahead and stand for our prayer of illumination and scripture reading.
Pastor Kenneth Dyches: Eternal God, the grass withers and the flower fades, but your word will stand forever.
Pastor Kenneth Dyches: Holy Spirit, help us to love and trust your word.
Pastor Kenneth Dyches: Through Jesus Christ we pray.
Pastor Kenneth Dyches: Amen.
Pastor Kenneth Dyches: Our scripture reading this morning today comes from Psalm 46.
Pastor Kenneth Dyches: God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.
Pastor Kenneth Dyches: Therefore we will not fear though the earth give way, though the mountains be moved into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains tremble at its swelling.
Pastor Kenneth Dyches: There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy habitation of the Most High.
Pastor Kenneth Dyches: God is in the midst of her, she shall not be moved.
Pastor Kenneth Dyches: God will help her when the morning dawns.
Pastor Kenneth Dyches: The nations rage, the kingdoms totter, he utters his voice, the earth melts.
Pastor Kenneth Dyches: The Lord of hosts is with us, the God of Jacob is our fortress.
Pastor Kenneth Dyches: Come, behold the works of the Lord, how he has brought desolations on the earth.
Pastor Kenneth Dyches: He makes wars to cease to the end of the earth.
Pastor Kenneth Dyches: He burns the chariots with fire, or he breaks the bow and shatters the spear, he burns the chariots with fire.
Pastor Kenneth Dyches: Be still and know that I am God.
Pastor Kenneth Dyches: I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.
Pastor Kenneth Dyches: The Lord of hosts is with us.
Pastor Kenneth Dyches: The God of Jacob is our fortress.
Pastor Kenneth Dyches: This is God's word.
Pastor Kenneth Dyches: You may be seated.
Pastor Eric Stites: Good morning.
Pastor Eric Stites: My name is Eric Stitz, and uh no, I'm not a pastor here, uh, but I am a pastor, uh pastor in our denomination, and uh lead a ministry called Crosstown Ministries.
Pastor Eric Stites: Uh every time, oh thank you.
Pastor Eric Stites: We'll keep the woo's going.
Pastor Eric Stites: Uh every time I come up here, you know, uh some of you have been here for uh many years uh and heard this story, and yet uh every time I come to the new city, uh each week I just see more and more people that uh I don't recognize.
Pastor Eric Stites: And so uh this ministry is a ministry that New City um launched, helped birth.
Pastor Eric Stites: Uh, and we are in the Paramour community, um just a few miles uh from here.
Pastor Eric Stites: Uh and the way we say it is we're cultivating a gospel environment where loved uh people uh love people.
Pastor Eric Stites: And um, I'm gonna take a moment just to give you an update because I'm up here and you can't stop me.
Pastor Eric Stites: So um, but uh we've been working hard sort of behind the scenes.
Pastor Eric Stites: Um, a year and a half ago, we purchased a building, uh, which has been an incredible thing.
Pastor Eric Stites: And also, like when you buy a house, you realize that there's things that you gotta work on and get it right.
Pastor Eric Stites: And so we've been doing that.
Pastor Eric Stites: Um, last time I was up here, I think this was the last time, maybe it was a couple times ago, I don't remember.
Pastor Eric Stites: Uh, but uh we had a sewer problem.
Pastor Eric Stites: Um, we're still working on that and getting it fixed, but we should have it fixed um uh by the uh end of the summer, uh Lord willing.
Pastor Eric Stites: But I'm telling you that because it's something you continue to uh pray for.
Pastor Eric Stites: Also, one of the last times I was up here, I told you all that we would uh let you know how you can help us.
Pastor Eric Stites: Um, we haven't done that yet, uh, but as we get to the end of the summer, I want to let you know that we'll have some things that you can help participate in so that we can get ready uh for the school year.
Pastor Eric Stites: So hopefully you'll be hearing about that uh in the coming uh weeks as well.
Pastor Eric Stites: Um and so as always, um I thank you all for uh getting to be a kingdom partner of New City.
Pastor Eric Stites: I don't take that lightly.
Pastor Eric Stites: Um, and so getting to come here and share the word with you uh truly is um a privilege.
Pastor Eric Stites: Um I also uh since we're talking about being still and knowing God from Psalm 46, there's a group of people um that are here today that I would assume are extremely exhausted because they've been hanging out with students for the last two weeks.
Pastor Eric Stites: Um and I'm saying this because I have two students uh who are there who got to benefit from y'all's love.
Pastor Eric Stites: But can we just thank uh everybody who uh helped uh you know I don't I don't take it lightly uh when other people obviously are caring and loving on my uh kids, and I know you as parents uh think the same, and I know that uh it was two weeks in a row for a lot of them of grueling work, and uh so just want to uh say thank you um so much to you all.
Pastor Eric Stites: It really uh means a lot to me.
Pastor Eric Stites: Um well, listen, uh in our ministry uh at Crosstown, I work uh under this uh assumption um that uh people can actually change.
Pastor Eric Stites: Um I know that might sound obvious or maybe not, I don't know, but uh but I truly believe that a gospel-centered life um leads to change, that when uh I know that uh when I know what will happen um when the end of life is here, that it actually changes how I live right now.
Pastor Eric Stites: Um even more than that, the the same Holy Spirit that wakes my uh heart up and regenerates my own heart uh to see my need of Jesus and to receive and rest upon him is the same spirit that's actually changing me every day from, as the Bible says, one degree of glory uh to another.
Pastor Eric Stites: And I'm bringing this up because sometimes in church um we sort of work under the assumption uh that the whole point is just to make sure we get to heaven when we die.
Pastor Eric Stites: Um and I often tell people uh in our community that sometimes we do that and then we leave people in hell on earth.
Pastor Eric Stites: And that's not okay.
Pastor Eric Stites: That's uh bad theology, if I can say it uh as such.
Pastor Eric Stites: Now, before you start writing me nasty emails, you can put your phone away, all right, because I do believe eternity is real.
Pastor Eric Stites: Um I do believe that being separated from God is the worst thing that could happen for any of us.
Pastor Eric Stites: And therefore, we do everything we can to invite people into the hope of this uh gospel that we share week in and week out here.
Pastor Eric Stites: But the question then is what is what is this life right now?
Pastor Eric Stites: Did God put us here just so we can ask Him in our heart and then be in heaven one day, and then I'm not sure what happens now, or is there more to that dash between the year you were born and the year that you would pass away?
Pastor Eric Stites: I believe there is.
Pastor Eric Stites: And I believe that we actually experience a foretaste of heaven here on earth.
Pastor Eric Stites: And I actually think Psalm 46 uh is showing us a little bit of what that is.
Pastor Eric Stites: It's taking us on a journey of what Ben uh has called a subversive spirituality.
Pastor Eric Stites: Um, as he put it, as we enter into this spirituality of the Psalms, letting them counterform us, we can step off the treadmill and learn to live a truly with God life.
Pastor Eric Stites: In Psalm 46, I actually think this treadmill is a little bit more like a river.
Pastor Eric Stites: Uh it's a little bit more uh like a river where we can uh either choose to surrender to a river of chaos or we can follow the river to the streams of stillness.
Pastor Eric Stites: The streams uh of stillness.
Pastor Eric Stites: I think Psalm 46 is sort of presenting us with this thing of uh every moment, moment by moment, am I going to uh choose that God is in control, or am I gonna continue to choose that I might be able to be in control?
Pastor Eric Stites: That's the thing that it puts um in front of us.
Pastor Eric Stites: Um, Ben has been up here, different uh pastors over the past several weeks have been up here, and I'm not gonna bore you with like more statistics, but we've heard over and over again that we live um in an incredibly anxious culture, and in a culture that we can't sit still, so much so that we gotta write books like The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry.
Pastor Eric Stites: Um the author Brian Fickert, uh another uh elder in our denomination, wrote the wrote the book Becoming Whole, because he saw that as we were trying to help people, even in a community like the one that I serve, that what we were actually bringing people into was more anxiety.
Pastor Eric Stites: We weren't actually able to save uh and bring them out of a place of poverty, but we're actually bringing them into this culture of anxiety and never having enough.
Pastor Eric Stites: So we're we're trying to figure this out, and I believe Psalm 46 gives us a way forward.
Pastor Eric Stites: It gives us a way that God will get the glory, we'll be free to love, and in turn brings God more glory.
Pastor Eric Stites: So uh I have three points for us, and they're all around this idea of um a stream of stillness.
Pastor Eric Stites: So I want to start today.
Pastor Eric Stites: Um, you can uh turn in your Bible or get your worship guide out to Psalm uh 46, um, and we'll start in these first three verses.
Pastor Eric Stites: But the first um thing I want to talk about is this ever-changing chaos.
Pastor Eric Stites: Ever-changing um chaos.
Pastor Eric Stites: The first three verses of Psalm 46 describe um a scene of utter chaos, right?
Pastor Eric Stites: And in the second half, it talks about mountains being moved into the heart of the sea, uh waters roaring and foaming, and though the mountains um tremble at the at the water, at the as the waters roar and foam.
Pastor Eric Stites: And so it's this it's this picture of all hell breaking loose.
Pastor Eric Stites: That the whole created order is just um falling apart.
Pastor Eric Stites: And so we read these words, and I I think sometimes as we read the words, we can just kind of go, oh, it's cute.
Pastor Eric Stites: Um mountains falling into the water, and it sounds kind of crazy.
Pastor Eric Stites: Um, every time I I I uh I come up here, I feel like I just went on an epic trip where I went on a hike.
Pastor Eric Stites: Um, so uh last time I was uh I think it was the last time I was up here, I shared uh about going on a on a hike to a 14er.
Pastor Eric Stites: Uh for those of you who aren't cool and don't know the hiking language.
Pastor Eric Stites: Um that's a 14,000-foot mountain.
Pastor Eric Stites: All right.
Pastor Eric Stites: Um, last time I hiked it with absolutely no um preparation.
Pastor Eric Stites: Um, and some shoes, maybe just a little bit more better than this.
Pastor Eric Stites: Uh, somehow made it to the top.
Pastor Eric Stites: Um, and you would think that I would have learned uh from last year that I should be prepared, but I did not prepare this year either and decided to do it again.
Pastor Eric Stites: But my son Sam and I um went uh to Mount Elbert um in Colorado.
Pastor Eric Stites: It's actually the highest peak uh in Colorado, 14,000 something feet, too many, it doesn't matter, it was a lot.
Pastor Eric Stites: Um and so uh we're hiking up this mountain um and uh we get all the way uh to the top.
Pastor Eric Stites: And I wish I had a picture uh of it for you, but I don't.
Pastor Eric Stites: Um but we get to the top, and we are literally looking down at all the peaks that we were just looking up at, right?
Pastor Eric Stites: I mean, it's a surreal moment uh to look and see that every place we're we're on level ground uh almost with all the other 14,000 foot peaks around us.
Pastor Eric Stites: And so it's at that point uh when I imagine uh what the psalmist describes as the mountains would be moved into the heart of the sea.
Pastor Eric Stites: I can't even fathom what that would be like.
Pastor Eric Stites: Uh and you can't fathom it until you've actually seen it, until you've been to a place where you say, This thing is absolutely immovable.
Pastor Eric Stites: This mountain's not going anywhere.
Pastor Eric Stites: The only thing moving is me, and hopefully not just falling down, right?
Pastor Eric Stites: The only thing that's moving is everything around it, but the mountain itself is not going um anywhere.
Pastor Eric Stites: It wasn't moving, it wasn't gonna yield, um, and it wasn't gonna make this hike any easier for us.
Pastor Eric Stites: And so when we read these words, we can take it lightly, but the reality is this is uh an incredible amount of chaos that Psalm 46 is describing.
Pastor Eric Stites: That mountains would just crumble and fall into the sea.
Pastor Eric Stites: And so, what is chaos?
Pastor Eric Stites: What is chaos?
Pastor Eric Stites: Chaos is, when you look at this, it's a place of confusion, it's a place of disorder, um, of a lack of any kind of organization.
Pastor Eric Stites: Everything just falling apart, things constantly changing, right?
Pastor Eric Stites: Uh, if you imagine that mountain, if I was now there were certain places on the mountain, it was so dry where we would put our feet, right, and the rocks underneath us would just sort of crumble and we'd start sliding back down um the mountain.
Pastor Eric Stites: That's chaos.
Pastor Eric Stites: That's the chaos that nowhere, no matter where I put my foot, I'm not really sure what's uh going to happen or if I've got a sure place to put it.
Pastor Eric Stites: I live in a two-story house.
Pastor Eric Stites: Um, and sometimes, uh, I won't tell you how often this happens to me.
Pastor Eric Stites: Uh as I get older, I feel like it happens a little more often.
Pastor Eric Stites: Um, I get to the bottom of the stairs, maybe it's at night.
Pastor Eric Stites: Um, I get to the bottom of the stairs and I think I'm on the last step.
Pastor Eric Stites: Uh, and so with full force, I put all my weight to come down on that last step because I think it's what?
Pastor Eric Stites: The ground.
Pastor Eric Stites: Only to find out there's one more step.
Pastor Eric Stites: Um, this is chaos.
Pastor Eric Stites: The idea that even I would think I know where I'm gonna put my foot.
Pastor Eric Stites: I know I can stand on this solid ground.
Pastor Eric Stites: That almost is worse.
Pastor Eric Stites: Thinking I know um that where I'm standing is on solid ground, only to find out um it's not.
Pastor Eric Stites: We look around us, can he even mention it today?
Pastor Eric Stites: We look around us and we see chaos.
Pastor Eric Stites: So we see wars uh breaking out throughout the world, Ukraine and Russia still going at it, the Iran-US-Israel um conflict happening, Strait of Hormuz.
Pastor Eric Stites: Um, there doesn't seem to be an end in sight uh to all of this uh conflict all around us, chaos breaking out.
Pastor Eric Stites: June 8th, right here in Orlando, apparently, I wasn't I didn't feel this, but there was an earthquake in Cuba.
Pastor Eric Stites: And people said they felt it here, right?
Pastor Eric Stites: In the middle of the state.
Pastor Eric Stites: And so when we see uh Psalm 46 writing about uh chaos breaking out, um, even here, uh, we experience it.
Pastor Eric Stites: Just a couple weeks ago, um, actually it was last week, I think, I uh went to the beach only to hear that the day before we got there, uh, two young men had uh been taken out by a riptide out to uh the farthest reaches and not able to swim.
Pastor Eric Stites: And one of them, uh a young man actually from Orlando passed away uh in the midst of this riptide.
Pastor Eric Stites: This is exactly what Psalm 46 is talking about.
Pastor Eric Stites: Waters roaring and foaming, and us having no place to put our feet.
Pastor Eric Stites: And so we know what it is to see this chaos.
Pastor Eric Stites: And so a question for you all this morning is what's yours?
Pastor Eric Stites: Uh what's what's your uh chaos?
Pastor Eric Stites: Uh I know for me uh growing up, um I had an alcoholic father, and so chaos felt like normal.
Pastor Eric Stites: Um, never really quite knowing what was going to happen, never really quite knowing uh where he would be at, what would be going on, what to expect from him, what type of emotional state he might be in.
Pastor Eric Stites: And so, as a young man, uh not knowing that uh creates fear, creates anxiety, creates uncertainty, right?
Pastor Eric Stites: Uh maybe that's you.
Pastor Eric Stites: Uh every day I see the chaos of poverty.
Pastor Eric Stites: Poverty creates a sense of chaos, uh, ever-changing uh living situations, not sure where I might be the next day or the next week or the next month, and what does that lead to?
Pastor Eric Stites: Not knowing what school I might be at, not knowing what uh friends I might need to make or what friends I thought I had that I don't have anymore, um, different houses, one paycheck away from another change.
Pastor Eric Stites: It creates chaos.
Pastor Eric Stites: Uh maybe it's the chaos of family dynamics.
Pastor Eric Stites: Um, a spouse who's essentially abandoned the marriage or is emotionally just not there.
Pastor Eric Stites: Um, what does that create?
Pastor Eric Stites: Kids who are making bad decisions, um, and you've worked your whole life to try to figure all this out and do all the right things.
Pastor Eric Stites: Um, chaos.
Pastor Eric Stites: Maybe it's the chaos of money.
Pastor Eric Stites: Where is it?
Pastor Eric Stites: Um, how much do we have?
Pastor Eric Stites: I don't even know.
Pastor Eric Stites: Um, what is enough?
Pastor Eric Stites: How do I get more?
Pastor Eric Stites: Um, do I really need that renovation?
Pastor Eric Stites: Right?
Pastor Eric Stites: The chaos of money.
Pastor Eric Stites: Um, the chaos of this, the chaos of your phone, um, social media, the the endless scrolling.
Pastor Eric Stites: Um, you know, I it's really sad, but as I get older, I feel like I can actually say back in my day um and not feel uh like I'm that old.
Pastor Eric Stites: But um uh my wife and I talk about sometimes that you know, back in our day, you actually had to go to the store, and what was at the store was what you had to pick from.
Pastor Eric Stites: On Amazon, I can literally search for the same exact thing and find 15,000 versions of the same one and read 15,000 reviews.
Pastor Eric Stites: I don't read any of them, but you can read 15,000 reviews and figure out which one is the right one.
Pastor Eric Stites: And while this sounds silly, this is why we're writing books about an anxious generation.
Pastor Eric Stites: Because we we can't figure it out.
Pastor Eric Stites: There's so many things out there, so many available things.
Pastor Eric Stites: Um, maybe chaos is just your dinner table.
Pastor Eric Stites: Uh maybe you have kids like I do, and we're trying to figure it out.
Pastor Eric Stites: Um, it's the chaos of bedtime, it's trying to bring to order um all of these things.
Pastor Eric Stites: Ever-changing chaos.
Pastor Eric Stites: So, what is your chaos?
Pastor Eric Stites: And now I have another question.
Pastor Eric Stites: What's your relationship with it?
Pastor Eric Stites: What's your relationship uh to the chaos um in your world?
Pastor Eric Stites: I've got some ugly truths, all right?
Pastor Eric Stites: Uh the first one is I think some of us are actually addicted to it.
Pastor Eric Stites: We're so used to it, we actually kind of like it a little bit.
Pastor Eric Stites: We're so used to this just being the norm that it it it almost feels good.
Pastor Eric Stites: It almost is our warm blanket.
Pastor Eric Stites: Uh we can gossip about other people's chaos.
Pastor Eric Stites: Can you believe they did this?
Pastor Eric Stites: Uh we can gossip about our own pet chaos.
Pastor Eric Stites: Can you believe I did this?
Pastor Eric Stites: I kind of like that.
Pastor Eric Stites: Um, and why?
Pastor Eric Stites: Because we don't have to slow down.
Pastor Eric Stites: When we enjoy when we when we live this way, we don't have to slow down, we don't have to reflect.
Pastor Eric Stites: Um we don't even really have to take any responsibility for all the chaos around us.
Pastor Eric Stites: We just kind of keep living into it.
Pastor Eric Stites: Just turn a blind eye, stick our head in the sand, and maybe it'll get better.
Pastor Eric Stites: I don't know.
Pastor Eric Stites: And I'm telling you, that's not be still and no.
Pastor Eric Stites: That's not that.
Pastor Eric Stites: Second ugly truth is that uh uh with our with the chaos in our world is that we've just surrendered to it.
Pastor Eric Stites: Um we're we don't feel like there's anything that we can do about it.
Pastor Eric Stites: Um this was me and my uh family with my my father was feeling like I can't really do anything um about this, and so surrendering uh to the chaos in my world.
Pastor Eric Stites: The third one, uh, ugly truth would be some of us try to control it.
Pastor Eric Stites: And the and the key here is we control it ourselves, um, in our own strength, and we try and try.
Pastor Eric Stites: If I control the outside uh chaos outside of myself, I can have stillness inside of myself.
Pastor Eric Stites: And that's a big lie.
Pastor Eric Stites: So, what do you feel um in these moments of uh chaos?
Pastor Eric Stites: The Bible tells us in Psalm 46, it's clear, that the uh that oftentimes we're gonna be afraid.
Pastor Eric Stites: That's why uh the second verse says, We will not fear, though the earth give way.
Pastor Eric Stites: Because it's acknowledging that when things feel like they are completely out of control, uh, we begin to feel afraid.
Pastor Eric Stites: And so when that happens, we protect ourselves, we turn inward.
Pastor Eric Stites: Uh, when we're feeling like this is uh happening, we can turn out and attack others when we're violated.
Pastor Eric Stites: I was in Israel um uh several months ago, and um our guide spoke of this type of thing where he said, uh, you know, you've heard of a cold war.
Pastor Eric Stites: Uh we actually have a cold peace.
Pastor Eric Stites: It's not really peace.
Pastor Eric Stites: We're all just sort of waiting for something to happen, right?
Pastor Eric Stites: And what is that rooted in?
Pastor Eric Stites: Fear.
Pastor Eric Stites: Fear of the chaos of everything just uh letting loose.
Pastor Eric Stites: Now, so what's your chaos?
Pastor Eric Stites: What is it?
Pastor Eric Stites: What does it make you feel in those moments?
Pastor Eric Stites: And now, what does Psalm 46 have to say about all that?
Pastor Eric Stites: Does it have um anything to say?
Pastor Eric Stites: Interestingly, um, in these first few verses, um, the promise is actually that there will be chaos.
Pastor Eric Stites: Uh it doesn't say that God's gonna make it go away.
Pastor Eric Stites: It doesn't say he's just gonna uh take the chaos and just uh put it away in these first three verses.
Pastor Eric Stites: He simply tells us the truth in verse one.
Pastor Eric Stites: God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.
Pastor Eric Stites: You see, trouble is assumed, but where we turn when we're in trouble is the question.
Pastor Eric Stites: And so God is our refuge and strength.
Pastor Eric Stites: That's the truth.
Pastor Eric Stites: Um, and the truth I want to put in front of you is we all have a choice in the ever-changing chaos.
Pastor Eric Stites: For me, I didn't think I had a choice for so many for so many years.
Pastor Eric Stites: But the psalmist is letting us know no, you have a choice.
Pastor Eric Stites: Our God is the refuge and strength, an ever-present help uh in trouble.
Pastor Eric Stites: And so that choice is to find a strength that's not your own.
Pastor Eric Stites: It may not change the chaos, it changes how you see the chaos, it changes how you approach the chaos, it changes how you walk through the chaos.
Pastor Eric Stites: And so that's why it's important that we can name it because some of us are choosing chaos and we don't even realize it.
Pastor Eric Stites: And the psalm is letting us know there's another way to do it.
Pastor Eric Stites: This and so it's not a one-time thing, all right.
Pastor Eric Stites: This isn't this moment where I say, All right, I've chosen God, everything else is I I got it now.
Pastor Eric Stites: I know how to approach it.
Pastor Eric Stites: No, it's not just a let go and let God.
Pastor Eric Stites: This is a seasonal, a daily, an hourly, a minute by minute of where will I run?
Pastor Eric Stites: Will I run to the refuge?
Pastor Eric Stites: Evil doesn't want you to.
Pastor Eric Stites: Evil wants you to choose yourself, wants you to choose to fight your own trouble, to see chaos through your eyes, and in that way the enemy's won already.
Pastor Eric Stites: Once he gets us uh to do that, he's deceived us once again.
Pastor Eric Stites: The psalm invites us out of this.
Pastor Eric Stites: The psalm invites us out of this trickery, it invites us that you have a chain, a choice in the ever-changing chaos.
Pastor Eric Stites: You can run to the refuge.
Pastor Eric Stites: So listen, your choice uh is to run from uh the ever-changing chaos to the one who is the refuge.
Pastor Eric Stites: And so, in this uh uh river of life um that is presented in front of us, where there's the rivers that are uh the water that's roaring and foaming, uh uh God presents us with another option that you can get on this stream that's leading you to stillness.
Pastor Eric Stites: And so the second point that I want to make today is that the stream of stillness uh leads us to an unchanging city.
Pastor Eric Stites: Uh an unchanging city.
Pastor Eric Stites: So as we uh leave uh that the the roaring and foaming water that that can uh be destructive, uh we're invited to the stream of stillness, and verses four through seven say that what we find there is a city of God.
Pastor Eric Stites: See, Psalms 46 puts these two wildly different pictures in front of us.
Pastor Eric Stites: The first three verses is utter chaos, the world falling in on itself, and then verses four through seven, we have a city of God, and all of a sudden it's like everything's just going to craziness and just shh.
Pastor Eric Stites: And there's a place of stillness, of peace, of life and flourishing, of certainty.
Pastor Eric Stites: It's unshakable.
Pastor Eric Stites: The psalmist uses the word move several times here in these first several verses to emphasize that there's a difference.
Pastor Eric Stites: Everything else is moving and changing, even the things that aren't supposed to move and change.
Pastor Eric Stites: Where Mount Elbert, where I was standing on top of it, can just crumble and fall into the sea.
Pastor Eric Stites: All of a sudden we're faced with that shouldn't happen, but in God's city, this is a place that will not move, will not change.
Pastor Eric Stites: It's rooted, anchored, and grounded.
Pastor Eric Stites: There's chaos outside, but it's stillness inside.
Pastor Eric Stites: So he's inviting us, come, come here to this place.
Pastor Eric Stites: And how is that?
Pastor Eric Stites: How does God create a city where there's stillness?
Pastor Eric Stites: Is it because he's got bigger guns than the other guy?
Pastor Eric Stites: Uh is because he wrote the perfect peace treaty with everyone outside.
Pastor Eric Stites: Is it because he built a bigger wall that can keep everyone out?
Pastor Eric Stites: What does the Bible say?
Pastor Eric Stites: What is uh verse five says?
Pastor Eric Stites: The reason is because God is in the midst of her.
Pastor Eric Stites: She shall not be moved.
Pastor Eric Stites: It's nothing but the sheer presence of God in this place that would say, This is what brings stillness and peace.
Pastor Eric Stites: It goes on, it says that uh his voice in verse 6, he utters his voice, even though the kingdoms are fighting with one another, it's his words, literally his words, that melt um everything around it and bring that peace.
Pastor Eric Stites: Sounds good, right?
Pastor Eric Stites: I want to be in that place.
Pastor Eric Stites: Uh, but I'm not.
Pastor Eric Stites: I don't know where that city is, right?
Pastor Eric Stites: Uh where is it?
Pastor Eric Stites: Uh at the time of uh of the psalmist writing this, this would have been Jerusalem.
Pastor Eric Stites: Jerusalem was not a mighty city.
Pastor Eric Stites: Jerusalem was this kind of little place that didn't really have a lot of significance at the time.
Pastor Eric Stites: And so even in uh even in naming this as the place where God would uh would reside was would have been alarming.
Pastor Eric Stites: But it was it wasn't the refuge that came from the strength of this city, it was the refuge because God was there.
Pastor Eric Stites: So, what about now though?
Pastor Eric Stites: Do I gotta go over there to get to the city of God?
Pastor Eric Stites: I was just there.
Pastor Eric Stites: I was in Jerusalem.
Pastor Eric Stites: It's not it.
Pastor Eric Stites: That's not the city of peace right now, and the Bible doesn't see it that way.
Pastor Eric Stites: There are people waiting for a Messiah to come and reinstate this as a his holy city, but we know the Messiah has come.
Pastor Eric Stites: The kingdom of God is here.
Pastor Eric Stites: Not just the city of God, the kingdom of God.
Pastor Eric Stites: And so there's not an actual city we run uh to refuge.
Pastor Eric Stites: We're waiting for that day when there will be a new city.
Pastor Eric Stites: When there will be a new city that will come down out of heaven.
Pastor Eric Stites: That's what we're waiting for.
Pastor Eric Stites: That's that's the city we're waiting for, where there's a city of God, where there's a place of peace.
Pastor Eric Stites: Now, last time I checked when you walked in the doors, what's this place called?
Pastor Eric Stites: New city.
Pastor Eric Stites: Whee, it's an ambitious name.
Pastor Eric Stites: I remember uh 15 years ago uh when I was in seminary.
Pastor Eric Stites: Uh is that right?
Pastor Eric Stites: Yeah, that's a long time ago.
Pastor Eric Stites: When I was in seminary and New City was just a little church plant, um, where you did know everyone, Kenny, um, like you said.
Pastor Eric Stites: 15 years ago, right?
Pastor Eric Stites: I remember thinking, what's up with this new city thing?
Pastor Eric Stites: I remember turning to the book of Revelation, because when you turn to the end of the book, you find out that this is where it all ends up.
Pastor Eric Stites: A city where God says that there will be no more crying, there will be no more pain, that he will wipe away every tear for from our eyes.
Pastor Eric Stites: There will be no more death or mourning.
Pastor Eric Stites: And he says, To the thirsty, I'll give water without cost uh from the spring of the water of life.
Pastor Eric Stites: That's the vision.
Pastor Eric Stites: That's where all of this is headed.
Pastor Eric Stites: And I remember thinking, that's where I want to be.
Pastor Eric Stites: And so what do we do?
Pastor Eric Stites: In the meantime, between uh where where the psalmist would say there's a city of God, and now we're here, we don't know where that city is.
Pastor Eric Stites: What is it?
Pastor Eric Stites: It's us.
Pastor Eric Stites: It's it's us, the gathering of uh God's people in this place.
Pastor Eric Stites: When we're gathered together and sent out, God is in our midst.
Pastor Eric Stites: So much so that when someone who is in the ever-changing chaos of the world is with us, they should experience him as refuge and strength and ever-present help and trouble when they're with us.
Pastor Eric Stites: So let me say it another way.
Pastor Eric Stites: God is using the church to get his life-giving water to a thirsty, chaotic world.
Pastor Eric Stites: You look at verse four.
Pastor Eric Stites: There's a river whose streams make glad the city of God.
Pastor Eric Stites: And so in verse three, water is this destructive force.
Pastor Eric Stites: Water is the uh the riptide that's taking young men out to sea to their demise.
Pastor Eric Stites: And all of a sudden in verse four, it's changed.
Pastor Eric Stites: Water becomes the source of life.
Pastor Eric Stites: You see, water for a city is is absolutely non-negotiable, especially in the ancient world.
Pastor Eric Stites: Couldn't survive without it.
Pastor Eric Stites: Needed it to drink, to grow crops, needed it to have life.
Pastor Eric Stites: And so the picture that the psalmist is painting is that even though everything else going on outside of the city is utter chaos, inside the city it is still.
Pastor Eric Stites: While everything outside is dying, the city of God has life literally coursing through its veins.
Pastor Eric Stites: And so he paints an even clearer picture of this river.
Pastor Eric Stites: Because this river doesn't just kind of flow on the side of the city, sort of meandering its way, right?
Pastor Eric Stites: It's a little bit like Orlando.
Pastor Eric Stites: We don't have a cool city flowing through the middle of the city.
Pastor Eric Stites: We'd be so much cooler if we had a uh a river right in the middle of us.
Pastor Eric Stites: The closest we get is Sanford, right?
Pastor Eric Stites: St.
Pastor Eric Stites: John's River, you gotta go all the way up there.
Pastor Eric Stites: It's not fair.
Pastor Eric Stites: But listen, this is not this is not what he's talking about.
Pastor Eric Stites: The streams, uh uh, the river, sorry, that that he is speaking of uh flows right in the middle of the city.
Pastor Eric Stites: But even as close as that is, you see, there would still be people who would get to have that riverfront property, right?
Pastor Eric Stites: Because there's only so much you can have of the river, even if it flows right through the city, you have some people building their houses right on it to say, I got mine.
Pastor Eric Stites: Right?
Pastor Eric Stites: You'd have people fighting over it, fighting for access to the river.
Pastor Eric Stites: We want to be close to the to the water, paying top dollar to have that riverfront uh property.
Pastor Eric Stites: We'd be arguing, we'd be paying for who has the rights to live there.
Pastor Eric Stites: But the river in the city of God is different.
Pastor Eric Stites: This river has streams.
Pastor Eric Stites: There's a reason both words are there.
Pastor Eric Stites: This isn't just another poetic way to talk about the river.
Pastor Eric Stites: Oh, it's a river and it has streams.
Pastor Eric Stites: Oh, it's nice, it's cute.
Pastor Eric Stites: No, no, no.
Pastor Eric Stites: The streams are actually the little canals that branch off from the river that bring that life-giving water to literally every little part of the city.
Pastor Eric Stites: It reaches into every street, reaches into every garden, every field, every home.
Pastor Eric Stites: And as one commentator puts it, literally reaches every heart of every person in that city.
Pastor Eric Stites: This is the city of God.
Pastor Eric Stites: This is the river that has streams that make it glad.
Pastor Eric Stites: So much so, the Bible says in this verse, this water is so good that it's not just water that helps the city barely make it out of trouble.
Pastor Eric Stites: It's not just water that helps it to suffer but still survive.
Pastor Eric Stites: The Bible says this water is so good that the people in the city are having a party while everyone outside is in chaos.
Pastor Eric Stites: There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God.
Pastor Eric Stites: So, in the middle of all the chaos, the people in the city are enjoying life.
Pastor Eric Stites: That's what it says.
Pastor Eric Stites: There is a joy they have inside, amidst the chaos outside.
Pastor Eric Stites: So now, hundreds of years after this was written, God uh put skin on.
Pastor Eric Stites: And he comes and lives on the earth.
Pastor Eric Stites: Jesus Christ Himself had some things to say about water.
Pastor Eric Stites: He speaks to a Samaritan woman at a well in John chapter 4, and he told her that there's a water that you're looking for here at this well that I have.
Pastor Eric Stites: And it's a water that when you drink of it, you'll never thirst again, he says.
Pastor Eric Stites: He told her that uh it's a spring of water that will well up uh to eternal life.
Pastor Eric Stites: Jesus cut out a canal that crossed every barrier that would have been known at that time that would have said this water should never get to her.
Pastor Eric Stites: It was a barrier, it was she's a Samaritan woman.
Pastor Eric Stites: He's crossing the social, religious barriers that should have never been crossed.
Pastor Eric Stites: She's a woman.
Pastor Eric Stites: He's crossing this barrier to speak to a woman and share with her.
Pastor Eric Stites: He is connecting her by cutting a canal so the waters of life can flow to her.
Pastor Eric Stites: Listen, as the city of God, the people who have God in our midst, what does this mean for us?
Pastor Eric Stites: It means that we get to participate with God and in digging out the canals that could connect others to the streams of God.
Pastor Eric Stites: We aren't the water, but God invites us to participate with Him in cultivating the ground that his streams of water can cut through.
Pastor Eric Stites: We oftentimes in our own home have talked about uh how our uh little island where we sit around to eat, um, which has grown increasingly small as the family's gotten bigger, so we're sometimes we're standing around the island.
Pastor Eric Stites: But over the years of ministry, it's been a place where uh people are invited to come and just share.
Pastor Eric Stites: Um, people who look different than me, people who are coming from different situations, different traumas, different hurts in life, and there's this common thing that seems to happen, um, which is that at the end of a long night of sharing, of eating a meal uh and all that, there's another stream of water, which is tears that roll down people's face as they share, share the brokenness of life, share the pain, share all these things.
Pastor Eric Stites: And so, in a small way, it's these places where the canals are cut, not because Kristen or me or our family is that water, uh, but simply because we get to participate with God um in cutting through and saying, here we are, come and see the refuge and strength, the ever-present help in trouble, that there's a river whose streams make glad the city of God.
Pastor Eric Stites: So, with us um today here at New City, I just want to encourage you that we get to participate with God and seeing those canals cut and crossing every barrier in our city so that those who don't know him would know him.
Pastor Eric Stites: So, the stream of stillness, it's in an ever-changing chaos that we have a choice to leave that and go to the one who is uh our our refuge and strength, the one who is the God of an unchanging city.
Pastor Eric Stites: Lastly and finally, the stream of stillness leads us to knowing God.
Pastor Eric Stites: Uh leads us to knowing God.
Pastor Eric Stites: That start the this stream starts in the chaos, moves to the city, and now we're presented with the truth of verse 10 that this psalm is probably most known for.
Pastor Eric Stites: Be still and know that I am God.
Pastor Eric Stites: It's the first time in the whole psalm that God actually is speaking personally, He's taking on the personal saying, I.
Pastor Eric Stites: It's been the writer speaking about God, but now it's God Himself speaking.
Pastor Eric Stites: It's incredibly intentional by the writer.
Pastor Eric Stites: As if he is saying, Hey, you don't just have to know God through me.
Pastor Eric Stites: You don't have to know uh uh through what I am telling you about him.
Pastor Eric Stites: You can actually know him.
Pastor Eric Stites: It's not him over there, it's God right here saying, Be still and know me.
Pastor Eric Stites: Know that I am God.
Pastor Eric Stites: It's a fundamental question.
Pastor Eric Stites: Do you know God or do you know about him?
Pastor Eric Stites: Sometimes our knowing God is knowing the right things about him, and of course that's important.
Pastor Eric Stites: We need to know who God says he is.
Pastor Eric Stites: But this this knowing here in this psalm is deeper.
Pastor Eric Stites: It's a knowing by experience, it's a knowing that looks at all that God has done, all that he is doing, and all that he will do, and resting in that.
Pastor Eric Stites: And God himself tells us how this happens.
Pastor Eric Stites: Be still.
Pastor Eric Stites: Now, I'll tell you right now, this is the hardest part of the whole thing.
Pastor Eric Stites: I'm not good at this myself.
Pastor Eric Stites: Because in the being still, there's this slowing down, there's this choice in our heart to move towards God as our refuge and strength and move away from the chaos.
Pastor Eric Stites: But see, stillness actually exposes the chaos inside.
Pastor Eric Stites: See, it's when we finally sit still that the chaos that's going on is revealed.
Pastor Eric Stites: And because of that, I think a lot of us are afraid to sit still.
Pastor Eric Stites: We're afraid to slow down.
Pastor Eric Stites: And it's when the lies of the enemy rear their ugly heads.
Pastor Eric Stites: When we sit still, is when we hear, am I too far gone?
Pastor Eric Stites: Am I beyond the reaches of God's grace?
Pastor Eric Stites: It's in that stillness where we ask, am I truly lovable anymore?
Pastor Eric Stites: Am I worth loving?
Pastor Eric Stites: Does the past mistakes and wounds that I have define who I am now?
Pastor Eric Stites: It's the lie in the stillness of there's something just wrong with me.
Pastor Eric Stites: It's the lie of I'll never be enough.
Pastor Eric Stites: It's the lie of I am what I do, or I am what I have not done.
Pastor Eric Stites: And so it's in this stillness that we find ourselves vulnerable.
Pastor Eric Stites: And in and it's an intimate place of our soul.
Pastor Eric Stites: And that's why it's tough to go there.
Pastor Eric Stites: It's why the enemy wants to beat us up while we are there.
Pastor Eric Stites: And the enemy would want you to think that God is also standing in judgment over you.
Pastor Eric Stites: Um, as these places in our lives are exposed, and and evil would even want to take it one step further, which would want to convince you that you can't share these places with God.
Pastor Eric Stites: That in doing so, you're gonna be pushed away.
Pastor Eric Stites: But that is not true, it's the opposite.
Pastor Eric Stites: It's sharing these places in this stillness that is the very source of their undoing.
Pastor Eric Stites: You see, because the second part of being still is that the word be still literally means to cast down.
Pastor Eric Stites: It means to let fall, it means to relax.
Pastor Eric Stites: Specifically, it's talking even of our hands.
Pastor Eric Stites: So, in other words, stop making an effort, stop putting forth exertion.
Pastor Eric Stites: So some of the translations even take it so far as that these two words are translated, cease striving.
Pastor Eric Stites: One commenters, one commentator says it's not just a nice, cute thing of oh, be still, it's almost a rebuke.
Pastor Eric Stites: Saying, Hey, slow down.
Pastor Eric Stites: You don't need to take control.
Pastor Eric Stites: Just look at me, God, and watch what I am able to do.
Pastor Eric Stites: You see, the same rebuke came hundreds of years later from the mouth of Jesus, the Messiah, God again with skin on.
Pastor Eric Stites: He got in a boat with his disciples who still didn't know what was going on, didn't really know who he was, and a horrible storm rises up on the water.
Pastor Eric Stites: Wind and waves are battering the boat once again, waters that are roaring and foaming.
Pastor Eric Stites: And the disciples are panicking, right?
Pastor Eric Stites: As would all of us, looking for their leader to figure this out.
Pastor Eric Stites: And where is he?
Pastor Eric Stites: Asleep on a cushion, passed out in the back of the boat.
Pastor Eric Stites: And they cry out to him, Don't you care?
Pastor Eric Stites: Don't you care that we're drowning?
Pastor Eric Stites: And Jesus gets up, seemingly probably slow, looks at the storm, and he speaks to it, rebukes it with those same words.
Pastor Eric Stites: Peace.
Pastor Eric Stites: Be still.
Pastor Eric Stites: The wind dies and the calm comes over the water, and he says, Why are you afraid?
Pastor Eric Stites: Do you still have no faith?
Pastor Eric Stites: And so Psalm 46 comes into clarity.
Pastor Eric Stites: We will not fear, though the earth give way, though the mountains be moved as the heart of the sea and the waters roar and foam.
Pastor Eric Stites: The disciples were confused, but they had a sense that maybe we're coming into contact with God Himself, our refuge and strength.
Pastor Eric Stites: And so I put forth to you today that Jesus has come so that he might be our refuge and strength.
Pastor Eric Stites: In John 16, he says, I have told you these things that in you, me, you may have peace.
Pastor Eric Stites: In this world, you'll have what?
Pastor Eric Stites: Trouble.
Pastor Eric Stites: There it is again.
Pastor Eric Stites: He's not taking it away.
Pastor Eric Stites: But take heart.
Pastor Eric Stites: I have come to overcome the world.
Pastor Eric Stites: And so we we can be still and know.
Pastor Eric Stites: We can behold the works of the Lord because it's not just looking at what he's done in Psalm 46, but we look at what Christ has done, killed on a cross for your sins and mine to be forgiven.
Pastor Eric Stites: Why?
Pastor Eric Stites: So that we can be reconciled with the Father, so that he could be with us.
Pastor Eric Stites: The Lord of hosts is with you, and so that we might cease striving.
Pastor Eric Stites: Jason Wilson is a leader.
Pastor Eric Stites: He wrote a book called Cry Like a Man.
Pastor Eric Stites: I recommend it highly, but he's also the director of something called the Cave of Adulam.
Pastor Eric Stites: Um that's a reference to when David was uh running from Saul, he ran to this cave.
Pastor Eric Stites: Um he was soon joined by 400 men who were desperate, in debt, and discontent.
Pastor Eric Stites: And so Wilson started this thing to meet men who were desperate, in debt, and discontent, and helped them to see the love of their father.
Pastor Eric Stites: And so he uses martial arts to teach about what's going on inside of their hearts and turns them to ultimately a relationship with the Lord.
Pastor Eric Stites: And Wilson himself speaks on what stillness is.
Pastor Eric Stites: He says, stillness to him is not passive emptiness or loneliness, it's presence made visible.
Pastor Eric Stites: It allows us to focus on the very present moment where we are.
Pastor Eric Stites: And so, as something to take with you, um he has a practice for stillness uh that he calls the four R's.
Pastor Eric Stites: So I wanted to give that to you uh to take with you because I don't think it's fair to say, be still and know that I am God, not knowing how does this work.
Pastor Eric Stites: So he he has four R's.
Pastor Eric Stites: The first is reflect, think about your day.
Pastor Eric Stites: Where did you choose chaos?
Pastor Eric Stites: Where did I choose chaos?
Pastor Eric Stites: Where was their anxious striving?
Pastor Eric Stites: And what does that bring up?
Pastor Eric Stites: Reflect.
Pastor Eric Stites: The second is to release it's what Jesus, it's what we are invited to do in Jesus, to cast our cares upon him.
Pastor Eric Stites: So taking those honest reflections and handing them over to him, ceasing striving, drop the weapons of control, and surrendering the outcomes to him.
Pastor Eric Stites: The third is reset, it's simply to say, I am not God, but you are God.
Pastor Eric Stites: And in the final is that we get that rest.
Pastor Eric Stites: To enjoy the safety of the Lord of hosts who is with you, experiencing his love for you, the love that culminated with Christ on the cross, announcing it is finished.
Pastor Eric Stites: And all that stillness.
Pastor Eric Stites: What's it for?
Pastor Eric Stites: Is this just uh a pop psychology so I can be a better person or be more calm, um, so I can be more happy?
Pastor Eric Stites: Is it ultimately about me?
Pastor Eric Stites: No.
Pastor Eric Stites: Psalm 46 redirects us.
Pastor Eric Stites: It's actually about setting us free to love.
Pastor Eric Stites: Stillness is a place from which I can truly love others.
Pastor Eric Stites: It's the type of love Jesus told his disciples that you'll know my, that you're my people by how well you love one another.
Pastor Eric Stites: Without this stillness, our love is just a worldly love.
Pastor Eric Stites: It's looking to be seen.
Pastor Eric Stites: It's a love that's looking to have it returned back to us, it's a love that's looking to get something in return.
Pastor Eric Stites: And so in this place of stillness, we're freed up to love.
Pastor Eric Stites: And in that place, we're free to return glory back to its rightful place.
Pastor Eric Stites: I will be exalted among the nations, God says.
Pastor Eric Stites: I will be exalted in the earth.
Pastor Eric Stites: You see, when we love uh from this place of freedom, of stillness, we get to return the glory to God Himself, who says, I am your refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.
Pastor Eric Stites: He will be exalted among the nations.
Pastor Eric Stites: He's the Lord of hosts who is with us, the God of Jacob, who is our fortress.
Pastor Eric Stites: Let's pray.
Pastor Eric Stites: Holy Spirit.
Pastor Eric Stites: We ask that you would uh now be the life-giving water and that Jesus spoke of the water that would well up inside of us to be eternal life.
Pastor Eric Stites: And Lord, where there are uh obstacles and in the way of that water reaching each of us in this room, Lord, would you uh be the river that has streams that make glad the city of God?
Pastor Eric Stites: That you would uh reach each of our hearts uh to know uh who you are, to know uh that you are the one who is in control, uh, to know that you are the one who is our refuge and strength.
Pastor Eric Stites: Would you be that for us now?
Pastor Eric Stites: In Jesus' name.
Pastor Eric Stites: Amen.