Well, here we go. Before I get into it, I want
to thank Todd, because now I realize that he clumps me in with the
young men. OK, so my kids, when they tell me
I'm an old man, I'm going to say, well, Todd put in the bulletin
that I was a young man. Go ahead and turn to Psalm 46.
I'm going to take advantage of this water. While you're turning to Psalm
46, I want to tell you that it's my hope tonight that Christ would
be exalted in sheltering us and not leaving us to ourselves. The hireling flees, but not our
Lord. He won't flee. At great cost
to Himself, He became our refuge and our strength. He is a very
present help in time of trouble. Let's read Psalm 46. God is our refuge and strength,
a very present help in time of trouble. Therefore will not we
fear, though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried
into the midst of the sea, though the waters thereof roar and be
troubled, though the mountains shake with the swelling thereof.
There is a river, streams whereof shall make glad the city of God,
the holy place of the tabernacles of the Most High. God is in the
midst of her. She shall not be moved. God shall
help her that right early. The heathen raged. The kingdoms
were moved. He uttered his voice, the earth
melted. The Lord of hosts is with us. The God of Jacob is
our refuge. Come behold the works of the
Lord. What desolations he hath made in the earth. He maketh
wars to cease under the end of the earth. He breaketh the bow
and cutteth the spear in sunder. He burneth the chariot in the
fire. And then the Lord says this, to be still and know that
I am God. I will be exalted among the heathen.
I will be exalted in the earth. The Lord of hosts is with us. The God of Jacob is our refuge. My first point is that the Lord
Jesus Christ is our refuge. He is our strength, and He it
is that is our very present help in time of trouble. God is a
refuge or a shelter for those that have no refuge. God is a
help for those that are without strength. Our God does not compete
for our attention. If His purpose is to help us,
then we will find ourselves without any natural strength to come
unto Him. If we have no shelter, then are
we a candidate to find shelter in Him. We find shelter in the
Rock, Christ Jesus. This is the same as saying, if
you have nothing in yourself and the Lord is your refuge,
then what you have is all things. Because Christ provides everything
for our salvation. In Job 24, verse eight, we read,
you don't have to turn there, but we read there, they are wet
with the showers of the mountains and they embrace the rock for
want of a shelter. And I ask you, I ask myself,
are you wet with the mountains of your own sin? Do you find that you have nowhere
to go? Then you can embrace the rock.
Do you know that in you dwells no good thing? Then you can embrace
the rock. Do you want Christ to get all
the glory in your salvation because he earned it on the cross? Then
you can go to the rock. You can embrace the rock, Christ
Jesus. And you come to this rock for
shelter. because He is able to keep you from falling. He's able
to keep us from falling. I only find refuge in the redemption
that Christ has accomplished and not in anything that I've
done or anything that I could do. What do I do when I find
myself without strength? I can't turn to the law. There
is no shelter in the law. The law just stirs up my sin.
Nor can I find shelter in a decision that I've made because I'm ungodly. And any decision I make is an
ungodly decision. And I can't find any refuge in
that. But rather I find refuge in the
gospel as I'm drawn to him with an empty cup in my need and in
my lack of strength. And the Lord, according to Matthew
15, 32, is moved with compassion to aid those that are without
strength. He's moved to aid them. He's moved when he sees them
without strength. Again, I want to say that Christ
is the only refuge for sinners. The Lord Jesus Christ is our
refuge and our strength. He it is that is our very present
help in time of trouble. Now go ahead, I want to expound
just a moment on this through Psalm 48, probably just a page
over. Here we read, Great is the Lord
and greatly to be praised in the city of our God, in the mountain
of his holiness. Our Savior is so great. That
no one and no thing can compare to him, there is nothing to be
compared to how glorious the Lord is when he visits his bride
in the preaching of the gospel. And oh, for grace to praise him
greatly. First to beautiful for situation,
the joy of the whole earth is Mount Zion on the sides of the
north, the city of the great king. The church is his bride. And he loves her with an everlasting
love. When the gospel is preached and
Christ is worshiped in the new man, how beautiful we are to
him. Maybe not to ourselves, but to
him, every child of God is beautiful. She has been made the very righteousness
of God in him. We hear that declared in the
gospel. In verse three, we read that
God is known in her palaces for a refuge. And what I found about
this verse, if you have a marginal reading, you'll actually it doesn't
say there, but literally that says that God makes himself known
in the midst of her. He's known because he makes himself
known in and he makes himself known in her palaces for a refuge. And isn't it our prayer that
even now Christ would make himself known to us in the preaching
of the gospel? It's my prayer. God, by his spirit,
through the preaching of the gospel, makes himself known.
Like we heard this morning about Christ being that serpent on
a pole that if any look after they'd been bitten, they would
live. So when you see Christ alone lifted up, then he's sheltering
you. You're finding yourself in his
shelter. He is strengthening you, and
with the psalmist, your heart cries out that the Lord is your
strength and your song, and He's become your salvation. Back to Psalm 46. In verse 2, let me read verse 1 again. God
is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore
will not we fear, though the earth be removed, Though the
mountains be carried into the midst of the sea, though the
waters thereof roar and be troubled, though the mountains shake with
the swelling thereof, Selah. Therefore will not we fear. And
these four things, they describe trouble. I just don't know how
to say it. I looked at them and when it
all comes down to it, this describes the churning and the trouble
that's in me. And that is all that is, that's
all that's in the flesh. But a believer has no reason
to fear. And why is that? Because when
we see the judgments of God against sin, we see these things, the
waters roaring and are troubled. You know, this isn't anywhere
I want to be, but this is where I am all the time in the flesh.
But why is that? A believer has no reason to fear
because when we see these judgments of God against sin, we believe
that Christ stood as our surety before the world began and that
he bore all the wrath of God against sin for us in his own
body on the tree. He was made sin. And yet in him
was no sin. And now these fearful judgments,
they happen to the Lord when he was made sin. And therefore,
we have no reason to fear that they should fall on us. If the
Lord took our burden, then we don't have to bear it. Christ
is our refuge and our strength. I'm going to move on to the second
point, and that is that the gospel is what brings joy to the believer. We find that here in verses four and five. There is a river, the streams
whereof shall make glad the city of God, the holy place of the
tabernacles of the Most High. God is in the midst of her. She
shall not be moved. God shall help her and that right
early. You'll notice that the words
there is is in italics. I believe that is because this
river that's being spoken of, it's not just any ordinary river.
This river is the Lord Jesus Christ. And he is called a river
because a river gives life to those things that are around
it that need water to survive. And according to Revelation 22,
the waters of this river are for the healing of the nations.
The streams that flow from that river make glad the church of
the Lord Jesus Christ. And I believe that these streams
that we see here, there's a river, the streams whereof shall make
glad the city of God. I believe that these streams
is the gospel as it goes forth, having its source in the river
of blood that flowed from Emmanuel's veins. I don't want to hear any
message that doesn't have the redeeming blood of the Lord Jesus
Christ as its base. There is no salvation in any
other message. And the streams that flow from
that river, they make glad the church of the Lord Jesus Christ. And the whole word of God speaks
about Christ, doesn't it? This whole book is a wealth of
knowledge about the Lord Jesus Christ, how he saves sinners
by his own blood. The words of our Lord are living
streams of water, and in the preaching of the gospel, God's
word is heard by the sinner, and gladness is the result. Go ahead and turn to Acts chapter
13. Let's get an example of some
sinners that were able to drink of these
streams and were made glad. Acts 13 verse 48, and when the
Gentiles heard this they were glad and glorified the word of
the Lord and as many as were ordained to eternal life believed. And I want to ask what is the
message that these Gentiles heard that caused them to rejoice?
If you go back to verse 38, chapter 14 verse 38, Paul was preaching the gospel to mainly
Jews. And he said to them, he said,
Be it known unto you, therefore, men and brethren, that through
this man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins, and
by him all that believe are justified from all things from which you
could not be justified by the law of Moses." What is it that
they heard? They heard the gospel. And if
you look in verse 16 of this chapter, Paul started a message
that the religious of the day became angry over. But that same
message had an entirely different effect on the Gentiles that heard
it. Verse 46, Then Paul and Barnabas
waxed bold, and they said, It was necessary that the word of
God should first have been spoken to you. But seeing you put it
from you, and judge yourselves unworthy of everlasting life,
lo, we turn to the Gentiles. For so hath the Lord commanded
us, saying, I have set thee to be a light of the Gentiles, that
thou shouldest be for salvation unto the ends of the earth. And
so when the Gentiles heard this in verse 48, they were glad and
they glorified the word of the Lord, and as many as were ordained
to eternal life, believed. When the Gentiles heard, God
gave them ears to hear the gospel. He gave them a new heart to believe
it. And in hearing and believing, the Lord gave them gladness in
their hearts. They glorified the word of the
Lord. They glorified in salvation by grace. They gloried in the
forgiveness of sins. They gloried in justification
by Christ and not by the deeds of the law. And they gloried
in election because they gloried in Christ who made it all happen. They were glad when they drank
of those streams, when they heard the gospel, they were glad. God is in, back to Psalm 46,
verse 5. God is in the midst of her. She
shall not be moved, and God shall help her in that right early.
How glorious to consider that in this world we have the promise
that God is in the midst of his people. We know that the God
of glory dwells in a light that no man can approach unto, but
here lies a great promise that in Christ we have the continual
blessing of the presence of God Almighty. And how is this possible? How
can God, who is of purer eyes than to behold evil, dwell with
me, who am a sinner? Don't we all want to know that?
He puts Christ in you even as He put you in Him before the
foundation of the world. Go ahead and turn to Colossians
chapter 1. We'll start and we'll read verses
26 and 27. verse 26 Colossians chapter 1,
Even the mystery which hath been hid from ages, and from generations,
that now is made manifest to his saints, to whom God would
make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery
among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. How is it that God dwells with
his people? He puts Christ in you in the
new birth. And He does this for each of
His children. He gives them a new nature. And
in this new nature, Christ dwells in our hearts by faith. And I
pray that the Lord would continue to bathe us in the streams of
the gospel. That our hearts might be glad.
That He might dwell in our hearts by faith. And back to Psalm 46. The third point, or rather question,
that I want to talk about is why do the heathen rage? Why
do the heathen rage? Because in our text, in verse
6, the scriptures say, the heathen raged, the kingdoms were moved,
and he uttered his voice and the earth melted. And I was talking
to our pastor about the raging of the heathen. One of the main things that he
thought I might want to bring out, just as we're talking, that
the believer has this same warfare of rage against God that the
unbeliever has. We have just as much trouble
with what we hear that the unbeliever does. So what about it? You know, is that all? I sure
hope not. But the third thing that I would
like to consider is how that the very thing that makes the
heathen rage, okay, is the very thing that the believer is pursuing
with all his heart. And that is that Christ gets
all the glory in salvation. That is what, that's what we
want. And that's why the heathen rage, because they want that.
And we want that by nature. In all things, I pray Christ
would have the preeminence. So the heathen raged and the
kingdoms were moved and he uttered his voice, the earth melted.
So the second psalm picks up the same question and it says,
why did the heathen rage? And the enemies of the gospel
find absolutely nothing in Christ that they want. Everything that
he is and everything that he stands for is in direct opposition
to the natural man. So that he cannot do anything
but rage against him. So in stark contrast, I know
that we have that same nature, but in stark contrast, the believer
finds his all in all to be in Christ alone. Alone. Everything that he is,
is a joy to the believer. And in that new man that's created
in Christ Jesus, he can do nothing but give God the glory in all
his salvation. And he wants to give God the
glory due unto his name. Now consider Cain. I grabbed
a couple examples from the scriptures of men that raged. They raged. And the first was
Cain. God would not accept Cain because he brought his works
to the bargaining table. The scriptures say that he was
full of wrath and that his countenance fell. And when he was rejected,
he raged against God and he killed his brother Abel, whose own works
the Lord called righteous. Now consider Abel. Don't you
think that Abel rejoiced when God accepted the sacrifice that
he brought in faith looking to Christ? And then here comes his
brother. And I picture Abel dying under
the rage of Cain, somewhat like Stephen did as he looked into
heaven as he was dying and he saw the glory of God. And that thing that Cain was
raging over, Abel was rejoicing in. It's the same thing. And here is another illustration.
You all know Nebuchadnezzar, and he had that fiery furnace. heated up I think seven times
for Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. And the reason why he wanted
to put them in that fire in his rage was because they wouldn't
worship his image. Plain and simple. They would
not bow down and worship his image. And mankind has a false
image that he's been trying to put on the throne of God since
the garden. And it's called ourselves. It's called self. It's called
will. You can't call it free will because
there's nothing free about it. We'll just call it man's will.
Man's will. And mankind worships himself. And he does not glory in Christ. And he will not have that man
to reign over him. And that was Nebuchadnezzar.
He shows us that. When the Lord Jesus Christ saves
one of his elect through the preaching of the gospel, all
hopes of saving ourselves go away, and Christ alone is left
to get all the glory. And that's what he's going to
get, and that's what we want him to have. All the glory. And the unbeliever hates this
more than anything. There's not one thing that the
natural man despises more than this is that Christ alone gets
all the glory. He alone sits on the throne.
He alone is worshipped because he alone is God. And the last
example on this is in 2 Kings. I'd like to talk a moment about
Naaman. Naaman was a believer. But he had an interesting experience,
because the first time that he heard the gospel, he raged against
it. And in his pride, he turned tail
and went the other way, and he wasn't ever coming back. 2 Kings
chapter 5. Let me read this. I kind of just
touched on this. But the Lord gives us Naaman
the Syrian, who also raged against the Lord, but he was also a believer,
showing that in our old man this nature of flesh and sin still
rages against the Lord and is in constant need of forgiveness. What did I want to read? I don't
know what I said to read. This man shows us that believers
still have a sinful nature that differs nothing from the unbeliever.
So why did the Lord use him? as such a great example of election,
because the Lord did. The Lord used Naaman the Syrian,
this unbeliever that came to the prophet Elisha. He told him to baptize in the
Jordan, and he went away in his pride. Let's go ahead and look at verse
15. So this was after his rage. And that little servant said
to him, if he had told you to do some great thing, something
that measured up with your pride, wouldn't you have done it? But
he just told you to go dip in the Jordan, the dirty river. And so he went back and he did.
And the Lord healed him of his leprosy. And so now he's coming
back to Elijah and he says, and he returned to the man of God
in verse 15, he and his company, all his company, and he came
and stood before him and he said, behold, now I know that there
is no God in all the earth, but in Israel. Now, therefore, I
pray thee, take a blessing of thy servant. And this testimony
of Naaman is the testimony of every child of God. Behold, now I know that there
is no God in all the earth but in Israel. This testimony of
Naaman is the testimony of every child..." Sorry, guys. I have
trouble with my notes. I don't know if you are aware
of that. It's hard for me to go there, there, there, there.
So I say to you tonight that there is no God in all the earth
except where God is pleased to manifest himself in Christ. That's where God is pleased to
dwell. That's where the heathen are
pleased to rage when they hear the truth. They don't rage over
religion. They just get mad at it. They
rage over Christ because Christ leaves. He shuts them up. There
is no other option than Christ. So lastly, go ahead and turn
back to Psalm 46. And I don't really have a title for
this last point, but it's basically that we are made low to come
to Christ. We were made very, very low.
And that's really the testimony of every child of God, because
if we're lifted up in our pride, we don't see the Lord, you know?
We need Him to humble us in order that we might see that He is
our shelter and that He is our all in all. Psalm 46, verse 8. Come behold the works of the
Lord, what desolations he hath made in the earth. And when the
Lord speaks here of desolations, he is referring to how we have
to be destroyed even to seek him. How much bondage have we? Think about all the things that
he puts down in us. how much bondage we have, how
much baggage from our past religion we still carry around with us.
And what about that old man? that we have to lug around. And
I heard in a good message how when Paul was saying that he
carries around that old dead man, he was referring to in Roman
prisons where a prisoner might be chained up or attached to
a dead body as a form of his punishment. And that is precisely
what we have. We have a new man and we have
an old man. And we have a lot of baggage
in that old man, but the Lord has, you know, everyone that's
ever come to Christ knows what I'm talking about. The Lord has
brought us low so that we can receive Him in His fullness. Like John the Baptist said, He
must increase and I must decrease. But even though we feel these
things still to be our reality, they have been paid for on the
cross and they are no more in Christ. In Christ, these things
are gone and we don't have to fear them anymore. So verse nine, he maketh wars
to cease unto the end of the earth. He breaketh the bow and
he cut at the spear and sunder. He burneth the chariot in the
fire. And then he makes this comment to be still. Now that word still, it doesn't
mean the same thing that all the other stills do in the Bible.
It doesn't mean just to stand still and look. It actually means
to be crushed. That's what it means. It means
to be cast down. And it defines someone whose
courage has been lost and their hearts have become faint. Any
man or woman or child that comes to God in this manner of being
still, without strength and without courage, he finds such a blessed
end in coming to Christ. He finds that God is his refuge
and his strength. The last two verses read, Be
still and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the heathen.
I will be exalted in the earth. The Lord of hosts is with us.
The God of Jacob is our refuge. Selah. Thank you.