Praying Your Fears | Psalm 46
Brian Hedges | August 7, 2016
Good morning! I’m going to start this morning by asking you to pull out a sheet of paper and write at the top of that sheet of paper these words: My Worries, Fears and Concerns. If, in the course of the service this morning, anything comes to mind that is a fear or a worry or a concern for you, then I want you to write it down on this list. I’m going to tell you what to do with it. . .something that you can actually take home with you this week to help you, as you’re managing these fears and these concerns.
Fear is a very powerful emotion. Someone once said that the oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear. And, you know, sometimes people can be afraid of some really unusual things. I was looking, this week, at a list I found somewhere online—a list of phobias that people have. It’s pretty crazy, the kinds of things some people are afraid of.
We’re familiar with some of these. I’m sure you’ve all heard of agoraphobia, which is the fear of open places, or the fear of being in a crowded place like a mall or a public place or something like that. Here are some of the other fears that people have: there is such a fear called aulophobia, the fear of flutes (that’s right, the fear of flutes. Anyone have that one? Probably not!)
There is ecclesiophobia, the fear of church. I think a lot of people have that fear. They don’t know what to call it, but I think a lot of people feel afraid, feel intimated, about coming to church. There is a fear called frigophobia; it’s the fear of cold places. You don’t want to live in Michigan during the winter if you have frigophobia.
This is one of my favorite ones: there’s a fear called sesquipedalphobia. I can barely pronounce it! Do you know what it is? It’s the fear of long words. So, if you’re like having a panic attack while I’m talking through this, maybe you’ve got that fear: sesquipedalphobia.
And here’s my favorite, zemmiphobia: this is the fear of the great mole rat. And to be honest, I didn’t even know if there was such a thing as the great mole rat. And then I Googled it – and [shows slide] there you go! Some of you didn’t even know you had this fear, but now you can write this down on your list—fear of the great mole rat. I think the only reason God could have made a creature like this was to scare people!
So, there are some pretty strange fears that people have, right? But, truth be told, we all have very real fears—not silly fears, such as these. We have really deep fears, deep anxieties, deep concerns that relate to the very real life situations that we encounter.
We have fears about our health, perhaps. We have fears about our well-being, our future, maybe the fear of death. We have fears especially related to our family, fears maybe about our children—their safety, their future, their spiritual or emotional or physical wellbeing. We have fears about our jobs and about our finances. We have fears related to our nation and the world in which we live—lots of things that go on this list of anxieties or fears or concerns or worries.
This morning we’re going to talk about how to address our fears, how to handle our fears, as we continue. Actually, this is the concluding message in our summer series on the Psalms, as we’ve been talking about praying our emotions.
The great Reformer John Calvin called the Psalms, “the anatomy of all the parts of the soul,” and said, “There is not an emotion of which anyone can be conscious that is not here represented as in a mirror. Or rather,” he says, “the Holy Spirit has here drawn . . . all the griefs, sorrows, fears, doubts, hopes, cares, perplexities, in short, all the distracting emotions with which the minds of men are wont to be agitated.”
Well, you may be agitated by some fears and anxieties, some emotions this morning. If so, Psalm 46 is going to help us learn how to pray our fears. I want you to turn there in your copy of God’s word, Psalm 46 (p. 471 in pew Bibles). This is a short Psalm, just eleven verses, perhaps most well-known to us as “Martin Luther’s psalm.” This is the psalm upon which that great hymn we sang this morning, "A Mighty Fortress is Our God," is based. Let’s read God’s word. Psalm 46:
“God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear though the earth gives 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. There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy habitation of the Most High. God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved; God will help her when morning dawns. The nations rage, the kingdoms totter; he utters his voice, the earth melts. The LORD of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress. Come, behold the works of the LORD, how he has brought desolations on the earth. He makes wars cease to the end of the earth; he breaks the bow and shatters the spear; he burns the chariots with fire. ‘Be still, and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth!’ The LORD of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress.”
This is God’s word.
So, this is really a confidence psalm, a psalm of confidence, a psalm of trust. But it’s a psalm that expresses deep trust in God in spite of the circumstances that normally provoke fear.
As we work through the psalm, I want you to notice three things this morning: First of all, confidence in the face of fear; secondly, the reasons for this confidence; and then, thirdly, how to get this confidence.
I. Confidence in the face of fear (vv. 1-3)
First of all, confidence in the face of fear. We see this confidence expressed in verse 1: “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble." These are vivid images—concrete, powerful word pictures that the psalmist uses. God is our refuge. What is a refuge? A refuge is a symbol of strength, of stability, of safety, of shelter. A refuge is something you go into to hide from danger.
But then, God is also “our strength and a very present help in trouble.” To paraphrase one commentary, God is a refuge in which to hide, he gives strength to bear our trials, and he offers help that stands ready for our need.
That’s the psalmist’s confession of faith. He’s declaring his confidence in God, that God is his refuge and his strength. But notice that he does this in the face of fear. We see this in verses 2-3: "Therefore [he says, because God is our refuge] we will not fear, though the earth gives 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."
Again, he uses very powerful, concrete images. What are mountains? Mountains are symbols of stability, something immovable, something impregnable—the earth and the mountains. He sets the image of the earth and the mountains over against the most menacing image to the Hebrew mind—the image of the sea, restless and menacing.
Luke Potter mentioned this last week, in his sermon on Psalm 130, “the depths.” For the Hebrew mind, the sea—the waters—represented the forces of chaos, the forces of disorder and of evil. So, here is the scene that the psalmist envisions: he’s thinking of a situation where the most stable and secure things in his life, his family and his nation are about to be overwhelmed by the forces of chaos and disorder, swallowed up by the forces of evil.
He is probably thinking specifically about the menacing threat of enemy nations and the awful specter of war, because in verse 6 he talks about “the nations raging” and in verse 9 he envisions God bringing war to an end. So the psalm moves from word pictures and imagery down to more concrete situations as he looks at the political unrest of Israel, the threats that are raging against Israel.
And he says that, even in the face of such fears, even with the prospect of these threatening, terrifying, circumstances before him, he says, “We will not fear. I’m not going to be afraid, because God is my refuge!”
Now, brothers and sisters, my sense is that we need this kind of confidence, especially right now. Our world is a mess! The world in which we live right now is a frightening place, isn’t it?
You know, I grew up at the end of the Cold War - Ronald Reagan took office in 1980, when I was six years old. By the time I was old enough to understand nuclear weapons, people weren’t really afraid of them anymore. The Berlin Wall had fallen, the Cold War seemed to have ended, and we entered into this really peaceful period in the 80’s and the 90’s. I never, one time, thought to ask my parents, “Is it possible that a terrorist attack could happen in our nation, in one of our cities?”
That time is over. Just in the last year, we’ve had two ISIS attacks in our country, not to mention the dozens of attacks that are happening in European and African countries. Almost every week, there’s another news report.
And then, add to that the escalation of racial conflict in our country that we saw, especially last month. After the deaths of Philando Castile and Alton Sterling last month, an African-American friend named Eric Redmond, who is a professor at Moody Bible Institute, wrote a blog post that began with these words: “I have extremely great concern for myself, my wife, my daughters, and my sons. . .” and went on to describe the very real fear that he has of the wrongful use of force against him and his family. And, of course, the fears run both ways, as policemen now fear for their lives—unwarranted, unprovoked violence, as we saw in both Dallas and in Baton Rouge last month.
And then, to the threat of terror and the racial conflict, add to that the political unrest in our nation in the midst of this current election cycle. It’s enough to make us feel that the forces of chaos are about to swallow us up!
So, we need this, don’t we? We need this kind of gospel confidence that is able to say, “Even if everything secure and stable in our lives, in our families, in our nation and in the world is swallowed up in the forces of chaos and evil, we won’t be afraid! We won’t be afraid, because God is our refuge! God is our strength; God is a very present help in trouble!”
We need to be able to sing with Martin Luther:
And though this world, with devils filled,
Should threaten to undo us,
We will not fear, for God hath willed
His truth to triumph through us!
So, the question then is, “Why should we be confident?” Where does such confidence come from? What are the reasons for this confidence? That leads us to the second point.
II. The reason for our confidence (1, 4-7)
We see three reasons in this psalm to trust God, even in the face of fear, to trust God rather than give way to the fear. I want to give these to you quickly.
(1) First of all, the power and protection of God (vv. 1, 7)
We’ve already looked at verse 1, but look at it again briefly: “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.” As we’ve already seen, “refuge” is a metaphor for shelter, for safety, for strength. Then, verses 7 and 11 add another image: “fortress,” a related word picture. These word pictures not only portray God as powerful and strong—they portray God as powerful and strong for us!
It’s not just that God is powerful, it’s that God is powerful on our behalf, that He’s strong and powerful for us! It’s not only that He’s mighty, but that He is a mighty fortress into which we can run—in which we can hide!
These word pictures are teaching us that God leverages his might and his power on behalf of his people—the power and the protection of God—God’s power and strength used to protect his people. That’s the first reason we should not fear. . .the power and the protection of God.
The second reason we should not fear is. . .
(2) The presence of God (vv. 1, 5, 7, 11)
Because God is not only for us, notice in the Psalm, he is also with us. We see this in several verses:Verse 1: “he is a very present help in trouble;" verse 5: “God is in the midst of her [the city of God]; she shall not be moved;" verses 7, 11: “The LORD of hosts is with us”—the Lord of the armies, the mighty warrior, the God who commands the hosts of heaven and earth! He is with us." So, the presence of God.
The psalmist is saying that God is present with us in the storm, He’s present with us in the chaos, in the darkness, in whatever frightening circumstances we find ourselves in. This is God’s great promise. We can rely on these wonderful promises of Scripture, such as we find in Isaiah, chapters 41 and 43.
“Fear not, for I am with you;
be not dismayed, for I am your God;
I will strengthen you, I will help you,
I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.” (Isaiah 41:10)
“When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;
and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you;
when you walk through the fire you shall not be burned,
and the flame shall not consume you...
For I am the LORD your God,
the Holy One of Israel, your Savior…
Fear not, for I am with you…” (Isaiah 43:2-3a, 5a)
The presence of God. He’s with us in the trial, in the danger, through the threatening circumstance. That’s why we don’t have to be afraid—because we’ve got God on our side. We have God with us.
Then, here’s the third reason:
(3) The providence of God (4)
We see this in verse 4: "There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy habitation of the Most High.” Now, most of us have read this text in isolation from the rest of the psalm. So when you read this, you might connect it to Ezekiel’s vision of a river flowing out of the temple and turning a desert, a wilderness. into a garden in Ezekiel 47. Or you might connect it to “the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and the Lamb” and running through the New Jerusalem in Revelation 22. And that’s right. The imagery of this verse certainly corresponds to and connects with those passages.
But there’s more here than meets the eye. I want you to get this. The river in verse 4 is actually continuing with the water imagery from verses 2 and 3. Look at verses 2 and 3 again. In verses 2 and 3, the waters are menacing, they are raging! The fountains are swallowed up in the midst of the sea, the waters roaring and foaming. These are menacing waters!
But in verse 4, the menacing waters have been turned into a life-giving river. God takes the very circumstances that threaten destruction, and he makes them serve his good purposes for the welfare of his people. As someone wrote: “the waters which threatened destruction have been subdued and thus transformed into the river of life.”
Do you know what this is? This is a really stunning illustration of the doctrine of God’s providence. The doctrine of God’s providence teaches that God governs all things, even the bad things, and he makes them serve his good purposes. He takes bad things and he bends them to his will and makes them serve his good purposes for his people, for the church.
Don’t you remember the story of Joseph? Joseph’s brothers are evil, and they sell him into slavery because of their jealousy and their hatred of Joseph. They mean it for evil. What they do is sin, it’s bad, it’s wrong, but by the end of his life Joseph is able to say, “You meant it for evil, but God meant it for good—to preserve this family, to preserve many people alive in this land.” (Gen. 50:20).
God was sending Joseph ahead into Egypt to provide for the whole family of Israel during the years of famine. What they meant for evil, God meant for good.
And in the same way, the menacing circumstances of this world, the waters of chaos, the forces of chaos that threaten to undo us and to overwhelm us—they’re evil, in and of themselves, but in the mighty hands of a sovereign God, he turns them so that they nourish and strengthen and feed and sustain. He turns the waters of chaos into a river of life, a stream that makes glad the city of our God.
The greatest example of this, of course, is the cross itself. Here is the greatest crime that has ever been committed in the history of the world. Man and devil conspire to put to death the Son of God! And God uses the cross—more than that, he ordained the cross—for his good, gracious sovereign purposes. For in the cross, this event—which on one hand is the culmination of wickedness and evil (from a human perspective)—through the cross, Jesus Christ felled our foes and emerged victorious, winning salvation for his people!
Friends, we’ve got to remember that no matter how fearful the circumstances. No matter how tight the finances become, matter how dour the circumstances in which we find ourselves, no matter how frightening the prognosis may be when you get it from the doctor. . .no matter what happens in this election, and no matter how violent the world gets, we don’t need to be afraid! We do not need to be afraid, because our God has got the world under his sovereign control; he’s working out his purposes.
So, we can hear these words from that great hymn-writer and poet, William Cowper:
Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take;
The clouds ye so much dread
Are big with mercy and shall break
In blessings on your head.
Judge not the Lord by feeble sense,
But trust Him for His grace;
Behind a frowning providence
He hides a smiling face.
God turns the waters of destruction into a river of blessing! We know that for those who love God all things [not just some things] work together for good, for those who love him and are called according to his purpose. (Rom. 8:28)
So, we’ve seen the psalmist’s confidence in the face of fear. Now we’ve seen three reasons behind this confidence: the power and protection of God, the presence of God with us, and the providence of God as he bends all things to his wise, merciful, sovereign purpose.
So, now, the third and final point is really a question:
III. How do we get this confidence? (8-11)
You can see that our focus in the sermon is not mainly on the fear. We’re not focusing on the fear—we’re dealing with the fear by focusing on the God who is greater than our fears. So, how is it that we get this confidence? Well, we really focus in on God, and we do that in two ways, as you see in the text: two brief answers.
(1) Behold the works of God (8-9)
We see this in verses 8-9: “Come, behold the works of the LORD,” the psalmist says; it’s an invitation, it’s a command. Then he focuses on one in particular—on God’s triumph, on God’s victory, “how he has brought desolations on the earth. 9 He makes wars cease to the end of the earth; he breaks the bow and shatters the spear; he burns the chariots with fire.”
I read those verses, and do you know what I see there? I see how complete God’s victory over his enemies is! He not only makes wars cease, he destroys the weapons of war! Do you see that in verse 9? He breaks the bow, he shatters the spear, he burns the chariots with fire.
Do you know what he does? He ends the war and he destroys the weapons so as to say, “They’ll never hurt you again!” He not only defeats our enemies, he takes away their power to harm us.
When we were in Georgia last month, we were staying at my in-laws’ house, and there was a little bit of excitement one day, because a black snake got into the basement of the house, where my father’s-in-law work shop is! Nobody wanted to go down to the basement, because the snake was down there.
My father-in-law tried to kill it, tried to poison it. It had evidently gotten under some heavy work equipment and he couldn’t get to it. He thought it was dead, but it wasn’t dead. But by the time he was finished with it, it was dead! When he finally got hold of that snake, he chopped it up in pieces, then went and threw the pieces out in the lake. That snake wasn’t going to hurt anybody.
That’s what God does with our enemies! The decisive victory has already been won—Jesus on the cross, he won the decisive victory against Satan and sin and death and hell—against the forces of evil!
He defeated our enemies by letting them do their worst to him. But the grave couldn’t hold him. Christ met, fought, and beat the king of death! And, friends, the day is coming when evil will be vanquished once and for all, where the swords will be turned into plows. . .where the nuclear weapons will be destroyed. . .where there will be no more guns, where there will be no more war! It will all cease, once and for all. Evil will be banished from this universe forever! Forever! That’s coming. He’s going to render all of our enemies utterly unable to harm us.
“Behold the works of the Lord:” his victory, his triumph over evil. That’s the first thing. Just look at what God does! Behold his works. Look at what he has done, look at what he is doing, and by faith, behold the end of the story, as we read it in Scripture, where Christ will utterly vanquish evil and make all things new.
(2) And here’s the second step in getting this confidence: not only do we need to behold the works of the Lord, we need to be still and know that he is God.
We see that in verse 10. Verse 10 is probably the most familiar verse in this entire Psalm. And there are actually two ways to interpret and apply it.
The first way is to view this as a call to each one of us to still our own hearts and to know God more deeply. And that’s right—we need to hear that. The reason why we fear is because we do not know God. If we knew God, we wouldn’t be afraid—not deeply afraid. We would counter our fear with the knowledge of God. The reason why we don’t know God is because we’re too busy. We don’t take time to know Him; we don’t take time to be still.
One time John Ortberg asked Dallas Willard for advice on how to stay spiritually healthy during a very intense and busy season of life in his ministry. And Willard told him, “You must ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life.” And Ortberg heard that. “Okay, I’ve got that. What else? Willard said, “No, that’s it; that’s all there is. Hurry is the great enemy of spiritual life in our day. You must ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life.”
Beloved, some of you need to do this. Some of you are deeply anxious, fearful, and fretful, because you are so busy, you are so hurried, you are so consumed with the things going on around you in your life or in the world - day-to-day activities - you’ve allowed it to just squeeze out time with God.
Some of you need to hear this. You need to ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life. You need to be still and know that he is God. You need to be reacquainted with God. A. W. Tozer, that modern mystic of the twentieth century, said: “The man who would truly know God must give time to Him.”
Are you giving time to God, taking time to know him? That’s essential! You’ve got to have that. That’s the first application. Slow down. Be still. Eliminate hurry from your life. Grow in your personal acquaintance with the God of the universe.
But there’s another way to read and interpret this passage. It’s important when we read this verse, “Be still and know that I am God,” to notice who is speaking. Who is speaking? God is speaking. But who is God speaking to?
And I think the answer is, he is speaking not so much to his people, as he is speaking to the tumultuous elements of creation and the raging nations of the earth. In v. 6 we read: “The nations rage, the kingdoms totter; he utters his voice, the earth melts.”
So, it seems like God is speaking here, not just to his people, but he’s speaking to the storm itself. So, the picture here is not so much the picture of the contemplative Christian having a quiet time, as important as that is (and we need to do that!). But the picture here is more like that scene painted by Rembrandt where Jesus is in the boat with his disciples and they’re fearful of the storm that’s about to engulf them and overwhelm them, and Jesus simply says, “Peace, be still. Be still and know that I am God.” What’s he speaking to? He’s speaking to the storm and telling the storm to be still.
And of course, sometimes that storm, that chaos, is right in our own heart. There’s an external storm of all the fearful, frightful things that are happening around us, but there’s an internal storm—the storm of fear, the storm of anxiety and worry and concern. Some of us, this morning, have stormy, noisy souls. If that’s where you are this morning, then you need to hear this word from the Lord as he says to your soul, “Be still and know that I am God.” He’s able to calm that internal storm.
Last month, while away on study leave, I read a new biography of my favorite theologian, the Puritan preacher John Owen. (His new biography just came out this year.) It was really helpful for me to read this. I’d read a couple of biographies before, but never one that was as detailed and as well-researched as this one was.
John Owen’s career spanned one of the most tumultuous centuries in the history of England. As a very young man, Owen was actually pretty ambitious to have political influence, and he really angled to have that kind of influence (not one of the more admirable traits in Owen’s life). When the Stuart king, Charles I, was dethroned and executed in January of 1649, John Owen was one of three preachers to address Parliament the next day.
And then he became something of a counselor to Oliver Cromwell, the Lord Protector over England during the Interregnum when England tried to move toward a republic, toward a commonwealth. Owen actually went with Cromwell to both Ireland and to Scotland as a chaplain to his armies—as Cromwell waged a holy war. Again, not a very admirable thing, I don’t think.
And then Owen was very involved in trying to reform Oxford University, again kind of working under the influence of Cromwell. But things really changed: Cromwell died and his son Richard Cromwell was not able to hold the throne, and so the republicans were overthrown, and Charles II came back into power, and it was a barbarous age! Charles II and his people were hunting down the conspirators against him, killing them. They were hung, then drawn and quartered, their heads posted on the outskirts of London, for all to see.
That put John Owen on the run. He was separated from his children, sometimes running and hiding from the authorities, because he was a nonconformist. He would not conform to the Act of Uniformity that demanded that all Christians who met in parties of five or more use the Book of Common Prayer. He wouldn’t do it.
And so, for the last couple of decades of his life, up until the Act of Toleration, Owen’s work was in virtual obscurity. He was pastoring a very small congregation; he was on the run, he was in hiding. He had lost a lot of the influence he had had before, and he was writing. During that period, he wrote some of the most important things he’s ever written, one of them a book that I read earlier this year that is probably the most important thing I’ve read in the last year.
By the end of his life, Owen was very discouraged. His hopes and his dreams for a reformed church in England had been pretty much overthrown. He felt like everything had failed. He had grave concerns for the future of the church. In fact, the subtitle to this biography I read was, "Experiences of Defeat," because that pretty much was the epitaph of Owen’s life. Over and again he just experienced defeat in almost every ambition that he had.
But what John Owen didn’t know, what he couldn’t have known, was how the Lord would use these books (especially the ones he wrote in obscurity) to nourish the faith, a century later, of Jonathan Edwards; two centuries later, of Charles Spurgeon, and after that Arthur Pink, Jim Elliot, Martyn Lloyd-Jones, J. I. Packer. . .and me.
Owen couldn’t see that. He could only see that his political aspirations, his desire for a Christian influence in the state and through the state, had failed. Near the end of his life in August 1683, Owen wrote a letter to an old friend, named Charles Fleetwood. He was nearing the end of his life, and knew it. He knew that he was dying; he was in constant pain, with an intermittent fever. And he wrote these words:
“I am going to him whom my soul hath loved, or rather who hath loved me with an everlasting love. I am leaving the ship of the church in a storm, but whilst the great Pilot is in it [the ship] the loss of a poor under-rower will be inconsiderable. Live and pray and hope and wait patiently and do not despair the promise stands invincible and he will never leave thee nor forsake thee.”
Brothers and sisters, you might feel like you in a storm today. You might feel like the church is a ship in the midst of a storm, that our nation, our country, our world is in the midst of a storm. You may feel like you’re in a very personal storm, in your family, in your personal life.
You take that list of worries, and concerns, it may be a really long list. Here’s what I want you to do with that list: I want you to write, at the top of that list, these words: “God is my refuge!” That makes all the difference in the world. Whatever your fears are, God is your refuge, God is your fortress. Christ is the pilot of the ship. Christ is piloting the ship through the storm, and he will never leave you or forsake you.
Therefore, we can sing with Luther:
A mighty fortress is our God
A bulwark never failing
Our helper he amid the flood
Of mortal ills prevailing.
Let’s pray.
God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, how we thank you that you are a God of strength and of might and of power and that you leverage all of that power and might for the good of your people. Thank you, our God, that you are not only for us, but you are with us. Nothing can befall us that has not passed through the good, wise fingers of your hands of providence.
Thank you that we can see, in the empty tomb of Jesus Christ, the proof of the final defeat of evil. Our enemies have been overthrown! Our last enemy, death, has already been vanquished. It has lost its power, it has lost its sting.
Therefore, we will not fear, though the earth gives way, though the mountains are cast into the depths of the sea. . .though everything in our world and in our lives that feels stable and secure is overwhelmed by the forces of evil and chaos. . .we have no reason to fear, because you, the Lord of Hosts, the God of Jacob, the gracious God of Jacob are with us.
Thank you for these truths. May your Spirit burn them deep into our hearts, so that we not only know about God, but that we know you. . .we know you as our God. Still the storms in our hearts; speak peace to our soul.
We pray in Jesus Name and for his sake, amen.
Brian G. Hedges
