Finding Refuge in the Faithfulness of God - Pastor Zach Nadeau-Denning
Take refuge in God by dwelling in His presence, trusting His protection despite what you see around you, and holding fast to Him in love — because He has already secured your salvation through Christ.
Transcript:
Psalm 91, 1 through 16. He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will abide in the shadow of the Almighty. 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. He will cover you with his pinions, and under his wings you will find refuge; his faithfulness is a shield and buckler. You will not fear the terror of the night, nor the arrow that flies by day, nor the pestilence that stalks in the darkness, nor the destruction that wastes at noonday. A thousand may fall at your side, ten thousand at your right hand, but it will not come near you. 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-- 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. On their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone. You will tread on the lion and the adder; the young lion and the serpent you will trample underfoot. Because he holds fast to me in love, I will deliver him; I will protect him because he knows my name. When he calls to me, I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble; I will rescue him and honor him. With long life I will satisfy him and show him my salvation.
Let us pray. Dear Father, as we come before your word this morning, we pray that you would encourage us by it, that we would look to you as our protector, as our shelter, Father. I pray, Father, for our brother Zach, that as he comes to preach to us, that you would fill him with the Holy Spirit so that he might deliver your word in the way that you desire him to, and that you might open up our hearts that we might receive and hear what you wish to say to us. We ask this, Father, in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
You may be seated. Very grateful to have our brother Zach Denning here with us this morning from Green Valley Crossing. Great help to me this week in dealing with everything that I had to go through. I only want to say one thing before I hand this over to him, is, I suggested to him that he teach on this text, and it's personally meaningful to me because when I began this whole process with the denomination, the Lord impressed upon me that I should really memorize some scripture, and he led me to Psalm 91, and I memorized that passage and repeated it over again and again, and I, I recited it to myself when I was at the convention. It's an, it's, I think, I believe it's a powerful psalm, and I'm looking forward to your preaching of the word this morning. Thank you, Zach.
Thank you. It's an honor to be here. It's been great getting to know Pastor Tom a little bit and his heart for God and for you all and ministry in general. And he told me he was going through the Psalms, and I said, "Well, I'll pray about it and see." And God just affirmed that Psalm 91 is what He wanted me to preach on this morning. And I tell you that as an encouragement that you would hopefully listen, take notes, be a, a proactive listener, so that you would hear what God has for you, because I believe even if I do a terrible job, the Holy Spirit is gonna preach a message to you that's gonna be encouraging, that's gonna be a blessing, and will be used in your life and in the life of this church.
So I'm just gonna pray for God's help for all of us as His word comes to us this morning. Father, thank you for your Word. We thank you for the truths that we can go back to, hundreds and hundreds of pages of testimony of what you've done for your people from the beginning until this present day, that we can rely on, that we can remember, that we can walk in, and that we can live in. I pray as this word goes out, Lord, that you would speak through me, that you would remind us all of your faithfulness, your protection, that we are in the shadow of your wings, and that no evil will overcome us. Be glorified, equip us, encourage us, and use us, God, for your glory and for our good. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.
So the point from the text this morning is take refuge in God because he has already secured your salvation in Christ. Take refuge in God because he's already secured your salvation in Christ. And so as we go through the Psalm, it's really gonna be broken down in, into three sections. The first point is just verses one and two. The second point will be verses three through 13, and the final point is verses 14 through 16.
So in the first section, verses one and two, we see that dwelling in the presence of God means setting your mind on the things above. Dwelling in the presence of God means setting your mind on the things above. It says, "He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High." This word dwell means to stay in, to make your living place. It's not a momentary time in your day where you go and, "Okay, I'm gonna pray for 20 minutes before I go to work. I'm gonna read my Bible for 10 minutes before I go to bed." It is a place that we live in our whole life, in the presence of God.
And when we think of God in this way, the Hebrew has many different names for God, but in this verse we see that the, the psalmist here is calling him the Most High. It's a remembrance that we are under his authority, under his protection, and he is above us. And so we're living in the reality that God is above all things, in control of all things.
And so we meditate on God. We meditate on who he is, on his authority, on his power, on his sovereignty. We meditate on his truth and his Word. We bring to remembrance the words that we've heard, the things that he's done in our own lives, the things that he's done in the lives of our family and in our church. And then the second part says if we do those things and we abide in God, this picture of abide means to stay overnight. It's this idea of staying for a long time. It's not just a momentary visit. The psalmist is impressing on us again and again dwelling with God, abiding with God, staying with God daily, always, for extended periods of time is what empowers us, protects us, and gives us the ability to walk in this relationship with God.
And then the, the Hebrew word for God in verse two is Shaddai, which means the Almighty. So God is the Most High and the Almighty. He is over everything, and he has the power to control everything, and those are two truths that the psalmist says if you rest in those, you will truly be able to say, "You are my refuge and my fortress, the God in whom I trust."
What other person, what other being is trustworthy? Who is higher than God? Who is more powerful than God? And that's how the psalm starts. Let us remember, let us dwell in, let us live in a relationship with the Most High, Almighty God, and then everything else will fall into reality under that.
When we remember all that God has done and all that He is doing, we remember His promises, we grow in confidence that He is our protector. It's not just a verbal acknowledgement, yes, I recognize that you're the Most High. Yes, I recognize that you have authority, but you are my refuge and fortress. You are the one that I trust.
This is like the caves that David went to when he was hiding from King Saul, the basket that Moses was tucked into when his mom tried to protect him from Pharaoh, the ark that carried Noah and his family through the flood, the house that the, the, God's people hid in, Rahab's house sheltering them from their enemies, the basket that Paul was lowered down in the wall to escape death.
And for us, this is Christ, our personal escape, our personal protection from the wrath of judgment to come. So as we meditate on these things, we hide and we are protected in the secret place, the dwelling place of God Almighty. We meditate on His Word, we pray for the Holy Spirit, that He would bring these mighty deeds to mind, and we are transformed, it says in Romans, by the renewing of our mind, so that we would see and know that God is indeed our refuge and our fortress because of what He's already done for His people throughout history. And I was convicted as I was going through this because this is the picture that God also has for our marriages, for our life, for our discipleship in a way.
God calls us to be like Christ so that we love our wives the way Christ loves his church. And I was thinking, "Does my wife know from my track record, from my history, that she can trust me, that she can find refuge in me? Not that I am a replacement for God, but that God has given me to her as the protector, as the provider. Does my track record show that God is working through me and that I can be trusted because I'm following God, or does my track record show that I'm not trustworthy?" And I was encouraged as I thought about this, because we're going through a time right now where we're trying to sell our house, and we're gonna move, and there's many couples that I talk to, I work in sales, selling building material and things, and husbands and wives come in all the time. And, and the, the wife always says, "Yeah, I don't trust my husband to do it. We're gonna hire a contractor." And when we evaluated our house and all the work that needed to get done, my wife didn't touch my arm and say, "Honey, I think we should hire a contractor." She said, "Yeah, go ahead. I trust you to do it." Granted, I was a contractor for many years before I moved into sales, but that level of trust, that she doesn't have to come assess my work. She doesn't have to say, "I don't know. Are you doing that right? Are you sure it's up to code?" Because of the work that she's seen me do already, she knows that the work that I'm going to do on our house will be right, will be correct, will be of a high quality.
She trusts me, and she knows that she can depend on me to do the work the right way, and that's the relationship that God wants us to have to a higher degree, that we don't go, "Mm, maybe I should find somebody else." We say, "God is the one who is all-powerful, has all authority, the one in whom I can trust to do the work in my life that needs to get done
And this is true despite what we see around us, and that's the point of the next section in the Psalm, point two in verses three through 13. Despite what you see around you, God remains faithful. Despite what you see around you, God remains faithful. So when we look around the world today, it's truly easy to be shaken by what we see. We hear of wars going on overseas, Ukraine, Iran, terrorists, Islam, Israel, Palestine, all these things. We hear of people coming into our country over the borders causing trouble, drugs, and sex trafficking, and all this evil and violence, and we can get so consumed and clouded by what we see that we can forget that God is still faithful in the midst of all this chaos.
In verses three through four, we see that God protects from physical dangers. It says that He will deliver us from the snare of the fowler, deadly pestilence. He covers us with His pinions, and we are under His wings. Now, this might not mean that God is gonna protect you from everything. I can testify that I've stubbed my toe, I've crashed a car, I've cut my hand open at work, I got a nail through my finger. God doesn't always protect us from our own foolishness or a lack of foresight and responsibility, but God does protect us in this life for His purposes.
He shelters us from the danger of the enemy, of evil. God has led his people through more difficult times. He has freed them from the slavery of Egypt. He has brought them across the sea. And in the wilderness of the Exodus, he provided food and, and water and a place of dwelling. This picture of God covering you with his pinions, pinions are the, the long feathers on the bottom of a bird's wing. And if you've had chickens or you've seen ducks or geese, you've seen the mother goose or the, the mother hen get all of her chicks and put them under her wings when there's a fox or there's some sort of evil thing coming to try to snatch one away.
And this is a picture that God has for us. It's a complete surrounding. When that bird is under the wings of its mother, you can't see it. It might as well be gone. It's completely encapsulated. And I experienced this firsthand. We were on vacation recently in Pennsylvania with my wife and all my in-laws, and my brother-in-law's two younger kids, a little bit older than my son. And we were at this house on this lake, and there was a little turtle that I caught for them to show them the turtle, and we saw the fishes swimming, and this whole family of ducks came by. It was a, a mom duck. The father duck was off somewhere else, and then all these little ducklings. And there were these tall reeds right by the dock area, by the house that we were staying in.
And I thought, "Surely, these ducks seem pretty comfortable with us. I could probably pick up a duckling gently and bring it over and show the kids," you know? And I thought it'd be a good learning experience, teach them about nature and ducks and everything. So I walk in the water, and the ducks are kind of quacking and coming around, and one gets separated in the weeds, and I go to pick it up, and the mother duck comes running across the water, takes flight, and dive bombs at my head, squawking and quacking.
And I was so surprised because it went from a moment of complete calmness to direct attack. I was coming for her babies, and she wasn't gonna have it. And that's the exact picture that God's showing us here. He is hiding us under his wings. He is gathering us in, and he is protecting us. So he's faithful to protect us from these physical things.
But in verse four, it shows that he's also faithful in that he isn't just a shelter. He isn't just a, a dwelling place and a momentary protection. He is an active protection. This protection isn't just a shield, the author says, but also a buckler. And if you don't know military terms and medieval hardware, you might think, well, it's just repetition. He's emphasizing the point. And that is true to a degree, but there is a vast difference between a shield and a buckler. A shield would be from the floor to under your chin or so, about the, the length of your body, to protect from arrows and distant ammunition coming at you. And many times, a military unit would line up their shields together to create a barrier and protection. The buckler, however, was a lot smaller. It would fit on your wrist, and it would be about 18 inches or so, or less. And what would happen when they got close to the enemy, when the enemy was pressing up against them and they couldn't move quickly with the big shield, the big shield would go down, the buckler would come up, and then they could hold the buckler in one hand and the sword in the other, and they could bash the swords or spears away at close range and hit with the sword.
So the shield is a large covering. It covers the whole body, but it's slow-moving. It's for mass defense. Think of a SWAT team going in together with their shields. But a buckler is smaller, it's swifter, it's agile. And the, the picture that the psalmist is painting for us is that God's protection is all-consuming. It's everything. God is fully equipped and fully capable of protecting us from anything that would come at us, whether it's far off or right up close. There's nothing that can take Him by surprise, and there's nothing that He is not prepared for. And with a God that is that prepared, that is that powerful and all-capable, what do we have to fear?
Yet the reality is, in verses seven through eight, that we often see the physical reality and forget the spiritual reality. We see the world falling down around us. We see that thousands fall, ten thousands, but we forget God's promise that it won't come near us. We forget that the spirit of death passes over us and isn't coming after us. It says that it won't come near your tent or come near you, depending on what translation you're looking at.
This idea of forgetfulness is actually the same issue that happens to Adam and Eve in the Garden. The issue of seeing what's physically in front of us and forgetting the spiritual reality and the promises of God that were stated beforehand. So when the the serpent comes into the garden and he says to Eve, "Did God really say if you eat of it you'll die? You won't die. What will happen was you'll know good and evil, and God doesn't want you to eat 'cause then you'll be like Him." So the serpent starts twisting God's word, and it says that Eve sees the fruit, perceives that it's good to eat, and that it's like the other, the other trees. And what happens is Satan says something that contradicts God.
Eve sees the fruit as it's physically edible. It doesn't look dangerous on the surface, and so she allows the words of others and the reality in vision, in what she's seeing, to determine the truth about what God actually said. And her physical reality becomes the authority over her spiritual reality.
And then she eats, and she doesn't immediately die. And Adam, who heard these words from God, who witnesses his wife be deceived, goes, "Oh, wow, that was interesting. She didn't die." So then Eve goes, "It tastes good. Try it." And Adam says, "Okay, I guess I will try it. You're not squirming on the ground, so it must be okay." And he ate.
Eve was deceived by the words of the serpent and by what she saw. Adam saw her live in sin, live in disobedience to God, and that she wasn't immediately killed, and thought, "Well, then it must be good for me, too." And the psalmist here is saying the physical reality around us doesn't always dictate the spiritual truth.
When 1,000 fall or 10,000 fall, that doesn't mean that we are also in danger. In this, this passage in particular is talking about the wicked, those that are opposed to God, those that have disobeyed God, those who are walking in evil. And it's easy to see them being judged and say, "Wow, man, that was my best friend. We did a lot of stupid stuff together. Maybe God is gonna judge me that same way." My dad passed away and he wasn't a believer, but he was a, a good guy, and I think he was a better man than me, so what hope do I have? And we start looking at the reality around us. We recognize that these people are just like us, human beings struggling.
But there's a difference in this Psalm. Those are the wicked. We are the ones, he says, who love God. And so we can walk in faith with the fact and the truth that reality around us, what we see and observe, doesn't always match up with the spiritual truth. So despite what we see around us, we must remember who God is.. We must remember His promises. And it says His faithfulness, in verse eight, right? I lost my spot now. Sorry, verse four. His faithfulness is that shield and that buckler, that defense that we have. That word faithfulness in other translations is also translated as truth. God's track record, God's faithfulness, the fact that He's always fulfilled His words and fulfilled His promises, the truth about who He is, is what defends us and protects us when reality doesn't look like what God says. The truth is, reality doesn't dictate our faith, doesn't dictate the truth. The truth interprets reality. The truth determines how we observe what is happening. Our faith dictates what we believe.
So this is the explanation of why the psalmist in verse one and two can confidently say that abiding in God brings protection. Clearly he's lived, he's experienced life and hardship, and yet he can say, "God is my refuge and my fortress. In Him I trust." Because he knows his truth. He has lived and abided in God.
And so in verse eight, we see that punishment of evil, and despite our own brokenness we will not face the same destruction. But we do look upon it. We do see God's justice in it. And the psalmist returns to the principle in verse one, "Make the Lord your dwelling place and no evil shall, shall befall you."
This is God's will for our life. According to 1 Thessalonians, Romans, Peter, and Jeremiah, God's will for us is our sanctification, our protection, our salvation. And then in Romans 12 it says, "Do not be conformed to this world, but by the transform, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect."
God's will for us is sanctification, that we would be guarded from evil. That despite what we see around us and despite what happens to people that don't know God, we are secured in God And if we are in God's Word, if we are fellowshipping with Him, if we are fellowshipping with His people, meditating on His truth, exercising faith in His promises, then there will be no opportunity for evil. It says in verse 10, "No evil shall befall you, shall be allowed to befall you. No plague come near your tent."
As we walk the straight and narrow path, God says there is no opportunity for evil. And that's what this word allowed means. Evil doesn't have an opportunity to get into our life to cause danger and damage if we're living and abiding in truth, following God's ways. And that's an encouragement to us. God first saves us and sanctifies us through the blood of Christ, and then He fills us with His Holy Spirit who brings His Word to remembrance so that we have instruction and guidance, and then He sends His angels to guard us and protect us so that we do not fall away.
So no matter how messed up you think you are, no matter how hard your life gets, no matter how chaotic it might seem, no matter how often you might stumble into sin, and you might be like Paul and say, "I do the things I don't wanna do, and I don't do the things that I wanna do," you can know and stand firm in the truth that God has equipped, that He is fighting for you, that He has you in the palm of His hand, that He has empowered you through the Holy Spirit to keep going, and He has surrounded you with angel armies to bring you to the fullness, the completeness of your salvation.
And so in those moments of struggle, of doubt, of uncertainty, we have to ask ourselves, "Do I really think that evil can win against God? Do I think that evil can prevail against God's armies, His angels? Do I think that my sin is more powerful than the Holy Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead? Do I think that my sin is more powerful than the sacrifice that Jesus made?"
And if those answers are no, then don't give in to your sin. Don't give attention to the enemy, those who persecute you, the evil powers of this world. God has already promised and secured our entire eternity, and he is working every day through these means to protect us and fulfill that promise. So don't forget it. Rejoice in it. Celebrate it. Meditate on it. Worship in it. Live in it. The things that once threatened us, the serpent, the lion, the dangers of this life, the spiritual evils, are now threatened by us because we have the Holy Spirit. God sends his armies to defend us, and we will tread on our enemies and conquer that very serpent who conquered Adam and Eve because Christ already did the work. And this is all accomplished by looking to Christ, by holding fast to God in love, by confessing our need for him, and recognizing that we can't do this on our own.
Put simply, it means to live like Jesus, and that's the third section here in Psalm 91, verses 14 through 16. Point three is know Jesus by holding fast to the Father. Know Jesus by holding fast to the Father. It says, "Because he holds fast to me in love, I will deliver him." In many places in the New Testament, we have the commandment to follow Jesus.
Jesus says, "Pick up your cross and follow me." Paul says, "Imitate me as I imitate Christ."
All these things remind us that Jesus is the example. If you wanna know what it looks like to live out this Psalm, it looks like living like Jesus. Jesus himself gives us a perfect example when he goes to the Garden of Gethsemane to pray. The dangers are around him, his enemy is coming to betray him, and he knows he's going to the cross. He's going to face death. And when he prays, he prays, "Father, not your, not my will, but your will be done." And in that moment, we see Jesus suffering, we see Jesus crying out, we see Jesus sweating blood, and it says God sends an angel, this is recorded in Luke's Gospel, to strengthen him. We see the fulfilling of what is written here in this Psalm in Jesus' very life.
And Jesus says, "Be like me, and those realities that you see will be the same for you also." No matter what comes upon you, the most vile evil we can think of, God is there. But we must be like Jesus. We must defer to the will of the Father. We must trust that God's will is ultimately what's best for us, even if we have to go through death.
When he goes before his accusers, he remains silent. He hands himself over freely. He's depending on the Father. When he goes to the cross, they say, "Oh, if you're the Messiah, just come down. Send the angel armies to, to come take you down and free you." But he doesn't. He goes without complaint. He doesn't argue with his accusers. He doesn't fight for his innocence. He doesn't try to prove to them who he is. He depends on the Father. He trusts in the promise that even through this, ultimate good will be accomplished. And even though his physical reality around him was telling him and telling everybody, "This is the end," Jesus knew that God would fulfill his promise, that it was simply a new beginning, a new life to come.
So he remained faithful even unto death. And because of his faith, because of his trust in the Father, because he was rooted in that intimate personal relationship with the Father, Jesus rose from the grave, the perfect example, the first fruit, and the source of our salvation. Not only overcoming death, but proving that the faithfulness to the Father reveals his faithfulness to us, that even in the darkest circumstances, God will always fulfill his promises, whether in this life or through death and into the life to come.
If we love the Father like Jesus does, if we truly lay our life down and defer to his will and not our own, trusting that every promise from God will be fulfilled in the end. Then we will know our salvation. We will truly know Jesus because we will live like him. And that word there in Hebrew in that last verse is actually very similar to the name of Jesus, and in some translations it's identical. And Jesus' very name means God's salvation, God's savior.
And so the psalmist here is saying, because you hold fast to God, he will deliver you. He will protect you. Because you know his name, his reputation, his faithfulness, when you call on him, God will answer you. God will be with you in trouble. He will rescue you, and He will honor you. With long life, He will satisfy you, and He will show you Jesus. So we must hold fast to the Father in love.
True biblical love means knowing somebody and despite the circumstances around you, it doesn't change your love and your commitment to that person. It doesn't change what you believe about that person, even though reality around you might be something else. If we love God even when life is awful and terrible, and if we love God even when life is amazing and people say we have no need for God, we have everything we could ever want, then it is evidence that we truly know Him, and we truly believe His promises, and we believe that we are dependent on Him.
It, it proves that we haven't forgotten what he said, what he has done, and that we trust him and have faith in him to fulfill what is left to be fulfilled. When we stop trying to control the outcome of our situation, when we stop trying to fight for the things that we want instead of the things that God wants for us, when we stop trying to defend ourselves and our own reputation, when we stop trying to fight against the sin of ourselves and the sins of others, when we stop trying to fight against the brokenness of the world and trying to make the world our comfort and our, our heaven now, when we finally surrender and cry out to, to God like Jesus did in the, the Garden, we know that he is the only way through this life, and then he will show us Jesus.
If you want to know God and experience his faithfulness and see Jesus, then hold fast to him in love. Love God more than you love yourself. Love God more than you love your life now, your possessions, your family, the things that you cherish and would never wanna let go. Be willing to hold them with an open hand so that God could use them and show you his protection, his plan. So what does this actually look like in our lives today?
How can we take this from here and apply it to our lives? How do we functionally take refuge in God every day, and how can we start abiding in God today? According to verses one and two, we set our minds on God, the Almighty, the one who is far above, the Most High. We dwell in His presence. We read our word. We pray to God. We worship Him and meditate on His truths.
According to verses three through eight, we have faith in Him. We believe that what He said will come to pass. We believe that God is the same yesterday, today, and forever, and so the, the way He loved His people and cared for His people in the Exodus, the way He loved and cared for David, the way He loved and cared for Christ and provided for Him, though He had no place to dwell, is the same way He loves and cares for us today.
When work is hard and you're struggling and you seem like you just can't get ahead, you're anxious, turn to God's Word and pray. Know that He provides all things for you, and He will always provide what you need. When your marriage is rocky, remember to put one another first above yourselves, to meet the needs of your spouse before you demand them to meet your needs. To serve your spouse, and by doing so, worship the Lord.
To trust in God's provision that He will do the work in their heart as you do what you're supposed to do in obedience to Him. And that you can simply be faithful to God and live in faith and trust in the Lord, and let the Lord do the work that He can do in your spouse. You can't change their heart. You can't make them the person that you want them to be.
You simply live by example, worship the Lord, and let Him do His work. When you're mourning the loss of a loved one and life suddenly seems cruel and unfair, you can remember that God sacrificed His own Son, that God knows what it feels like to lose a loved one, to see somebody go through death. But you can also rest in comfort and know that God also raised Him from the dead, that God has authority over death. That in our mourning, God can empathize and God can meet us, but he also offers us joy in the resurrection, in eternal life.
When life seems unpredictable, chaotic, when everything seems out of your control and like it's falling apart, we can remember that God protected his people. When the first rains fell and a flood happened and nobody knew what was going on, God protected Noah and his family. When Israel was enslaved, God led them out.
He, he led them across the sea on dry ground. He provided manna and quail. He provided water from a rock. God protected David from King Saul and helped him hide in the caves. He took a seemingly random girl and made her the queen, and used her queenly authority to protect all of his people. He surrounded his people with angel armies and sent enemy camps into chaos so that they undid themselves. He opened prison gates.
He made the lame walk, the blind see, cleansed the lepers and raised the dead. He disarmed the principalities and powers, and he bound the enemy, and he freed us to walk out of sin and into new life. If time permitted, we could talk all day about the mighty works of God, and that's exactly the point of this psalm.
There is nothing that you can turn to in the Bible and see this is where God failed. This is where God let his people down, but it's okay. He's gonna try harder. Every single story, every single book, every single passage shows God's faithfulness to his people despite our brokenness and our sin. So at the end of every day, recount what God has done for you.
Share with your friends, your spouse, your children over the dinner table how God has provided for you. Tell your coworkers and your friends your testimony. Testify of the power and the sovereignty of God, His faithful love to you. Instruct your children in his ways. When God's people go through the sea, he tells them to grab stones along their way, and then they set up an altar.
And God says, "When your children grow up and they point to those stones and they say, 'What are those there for?' Tell them what I did."
God wants us to remember His great work so that we could walk in worship and faithfulness to Him. Our faith is action.
Couple small details to point out. You might have noticed that this psalm is the psalm that Satan quotes in Jesus' temptation. And he says, "Jump off the, the temple. Go ahead. The angels will lift you up so you don't smash your, your foot against a rock." What Satan leaves out is what comes after that.
That you will tread on the lion and the adder; the young lion and the serpent you will trample underfoot. How convenient that Satan left out the promise of his own destruction.
And instead of falling for what Satan was lying about, like Adam and Eve did, Jesus beat Satan at his own game, quoted the scripture and said, "Do not test the Lord your God." And he reflected back on the truth of the Lord, of his Father. Instead of looking at what was around him and letting his surroundings dictate his faith and his belief, he let his beliefs dictate what he said to Satan.
So as we know God and trust in Him, we grow in love for Him. He continues to reveal His faithfulness to us, and He ultimately points us to His faithfulness, to save us through the sacrifice of Jesus. So the encouragement today is to dwell in the Most High, abide in the Almighty God. Know Him, trust Him, and you will experience the fullness of salvation.
I had to remember what time church started this morning, so yesterday I was on the website, and on the homepage, I don't know if you know this about your own website, but if you don't know, I'm gonna remind you. I thought it was interesting. Says, "To know God and make him known. That's what we're about at RCC. We want to know God intimately in Jesus Christ to showcase his love and salvation to all people." That's Psalm 91. That is your mission as a church. That is your identity publicly before people on the internet.
And so I wanna encourage you in that. If you wanna know how to live out that identity piece that you have on your website, this is it. This is the structure. So as you go through the week, I pray that we would all live that out, that we would know God, that we would make Him known, that we would showcase His love and salvation in Jesus Christ, that we would remember His promises and find comfort in His protection.
Let's pray.
Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you that from beginning in Genesis 1 all the way to the end of Revelation, there is nothing that shows that you are incapable, insufficient, but rather it shows that you are all-powerful, that you are faithful to fulfill your promises, Lord. And it's not that you lack, but it's that we forget.
Pray, Lord, that you would remind me, that you would remind us of everything you've done for your people at large, for the world as a whole, but also for us. God, help us to reflect on our own testimony, our own story of salvation, the way that you worked in our lives intimately, personally, the way you provided for us in moments of scarcity, the way that you blessed us in moments of loneliness, the way that you've protected us in moments of chaos, that we would remember your goodness and that we would say that I trust in you.
You are my refuge and my fortress. That you would be glorified in our lives so that we could point others to you. Help us to walk in that faith, that despite whatever happens around us, that we would live like Christ, that we would experience salvation, that we would know our Lord and Savior, that we would recognize what he went through for us so that we would have a deeper relationship with you, that we would be more faithful to you, that we would abide in you more.
Use your Holy Spirit to bring your truth to remembrance, that in the face of opposition, we can walk the narrow path with full assurance that we are going to be with you for all eternity, Lord. Bless us. Help us to live this out for your glory. We ask in Jesus' name. Amen.
Hey there, Pastor Tom here. I hope you enjoyed this sermon I offered to Rockland Community Church. Rockland Community Church is located at 212 Rockland Road in North Scituate, Rhode Island, just around the bend from the Scituate Public High School. We invite you to join us in person or virtually this Sunday as we continue our series Summer in the Psalms. It's our joy to welcome you into our community
Intro/Outro Song
Title: River Meditation
Artist: Jason Shaw
Source:http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Jason_Shaw/Audionautix_Acoustic/RIVER_MEDITATION___________2-58
License:(CC BY 3.0 US)