“All the Sabre Rattling!” – FBC Morning Light (4/4/2024)

Well, good Thursday morning to you. Today in our Bible reading, we're reading 1 Samuel chapters 19 and 20, and stuck in between those sections of reading is Psalm 59. I want to focus on Psalm 59, just a couple of verses in that Psalm.

Facing the World’s Saber-Rattling with Psalm 59

The ones I want to focus on are prompted by all the saber-rattling that's going on in the world, and it can evoke fear, can't it? You think about the threats of this nutjob in North Korea who's talking about developing a ballistic missile of some kind that can hit U .S. targets, or you talk about the leadership of China, or Putin in Russia, or the Iranians, or and on and on we can go, right?

All of these different world leaders who are spouting off some kind of threat, some kind of military threat, what they're going to do. Of course, probably the threat of nuclear war is higher now than it's been, I don't know, for decades, since the time of the Cold War, I would guess.

What about all of this? What about all these saber-rattlers? Well, I thought about them in relation to what I read in Psalm 59 in verses 6 and 7. Now, this Psalm is written by David, and David is dealing with some personal and national enemies that just keep after him.

He says, it says at the opening of Psalm 59, that David wrote this when Saul sent men and they watched the house in order to kill him. So the background to that is, you know, David was still serving Saul, married to Saul's daughter Michael, and guys were sent, dispatched to David's house to take him and execute him.

So that's the context in which David writes this. And so here's what he says in verses 6 and 7. He says, at evening they return, they growl like a dog and go all around the city, indeed they belch with their mouth, swords are in their lips, or they say, who hears?

The Lord Laughs at Proud Enemies

So here are these enemies of David, and think about, again, think about this on a personal, you can think about it on a personal level, as well as an international level. Here are these enemies of God's people, or as enemies of you as one of God's people, and they want to somehow attack, destroy, defeat you.

And their attitude is, God, there's no God, who hears what we're doing? You know, we're going to do what we want to do, and there's nobody going to stop us, there's no higher power out there that's going to have anything to do with us.

And then David says this, but you, O Lord, shall laugh at them, you shall have all the nations in derision. Here's the Lord's response, with all these big shot guys, national leaders, tough guys, throwing their weight around, threatening with nuclear weapons, and all this kind of stuff, like, they're going to bring the end to their enemy, whoever their enemy is.

And God looks at them like, who do you think you are? Who do you think you are, really? You shall have all the nations, the Lord shall, in derision. So how do we respond to this kind of stuff, knowing what they're doing, and now having some insight in how God sees them, what do we do?

Waiting on God as Refuge and Strength

Verse 9, I will wait for you, O you my strength, for God is my defense. My God of mercy shall come to meet me, God shall let me see my desire on my enemies.

So what do we do?

We wait for the Lord, we trust in Him, and it says, I will wait for you, O you my strength, God is my defense, that word defense could be translated fortress. You put your trust in the Lord, you hear what God is like.

He's a God who looks upon all of these braggadocious world leaders, throwing their muscle around, and He just laughs at them, because they are absolutely no match for Him. They're like a drop in a bucket to Him.

That's what we're told. Now, our response is to, by faith, believe that, and then put our trust in Him, who is our refuge, with the confidence that my God of mercy shall come to meet me, and eventually, ultimately, it may not even be in your lifetime, but eventually, you will see your desire upon your enemies.

It will come to pass by God's sovereign decree and power and authority. So bottom line, let's trust in our God, who is our refuge and our strength. Father, I pray that we would not be intimidated by all the saber-rattling and the threats that are going on in the world all around us.

Instead, help us to be consistent, to put our trust and our faith in you. We pray this in Jesus' name, amen. All right, have a good rest of your Thursday. May the Lord bless you, and good day.