Keep sharing good news without ads.
Source: https://www.sermonindex.net/speakers/bruce-rodgers/he-shall-deliver-thee/
Maybe we could read in Psalm 91, Psalm 91, reading at verse 1. He that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge and my fortress, my God.
In Him will I trust. Surely He shall deliver thee from the snare of the fowler and from the noisome pestilence. He shall cover thee with His feathers, and under His wings shalt thou trust. His truth shall be thy shield and buckler.
Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night, nor for the arrow that flyeth by day, nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness, nor for the destruction that wasteth at noonday. A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand, but it shall not come nigh thee.
Only with thine eyes shalt thou behold and see the reward of the wicked. Because thou hast made the Lord, which is my refuge, even the Most High, thy habitation, there shall no evil befall thee. Neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling, for He shall give His angels charge over thee to keep thee in all thy ways.
They shall bear thee up in their hands, lest thou dash thy foot against a stone. Thou shalt tread upon the lion and adder, the young lion and the dragon shalt thou trample under feet. Because He has set His love upon me, therefore will I deliver Him.
I will set Him on high, because He has known my name. He shall call upon me, and I will answer Him. I will be with Him in trouble. I will deliver Him and honor Him. With long life will I satisfy Him and show Him my salvation.
Now I'm sure most of us are familiar with this as being a messianic psalm. The tempter actually tried to use it on the Lord as a means of getting Him to tempt God, put God to the test in His faithfulness.
But if you look at the psalm, it is a tremendous encouragement of the will of God toward us. God is tremendously faithful to us. He's tremendously interested in our deliverance and our protection. But I'd like to notice the first few verses that refer to a relationship that has been cultivated and maintained.
And I guess what I have in mind is just to reinforce, if possible, some of the things that have already been emphasized throughout the weekend. I believe that the ministry of the Spirit of God in enabling us to defeat evil within us is one of the most crucial things that we will ever grasp.
It's essential that we understand how it works, why it works the way it does, that we don't be deceived by evil. You know, the older we get, the more mature we get as Christians, the less easily sin should be able to slip through the defenses.
But as we have been at least honest enough to admit, sometimes as we get older, we get more careless. And we're not always dwelling in the secret place of the Most High. We are not always experiencing closeness.
We're letting life kind of flow by, and we're becoming caught up in that kind of life. And so I want to encourage, again, the vital importance of our personal relationship with the Lord, the direct connection that has been made.
It should be very impressive to us to think of God having taken up residence eternally within our beings, to be so close to us. When you think of 1 Corinthians 6 and 17 in the context of temptation, again, he that is joined to the Lord is one spirit.
One day, I came to the kind of shocking realization that the Lord Jesus indwells my body as much as I do. He is as much a part of my being as I am. I am joined to the Lord on the deepest level of human existence, on the level of spirit.
And that means, literally, that I am never out of his presence. I am never alone. He is always, always with me. So it should be the natural response within us that we would cultivate and appreciate this wonderful presence.
He is the one who has mercifully taken us to himself. Throughout the Bible readings, we have emphasized the tremendous impact of his identifying himself with us at the cross. Identifying himself with us in all our shame.
He did not experience sin, but he experienced the consequence of sin. And in a very real way, he understands me and he understands my sin more than I do. Because he has actually experienced the outcome of what sin has done in my life.
What an identification of him with me. He has bonded me to himself. So as we have in this passage, this is our portion. This is where we belong. It's not that we are to visit with God every once in a while.
That's a good starting point. We're to live with God. We are to dwell, as it says, in the secret of the Most High. Is he our sanctuary, our secret place of life? Do we gravitate to that presence whenever we have freedom of mind?
We're not occupied with something that we have to do. Is that where our mind goes back to? Our resting place, where we live, where we are at home. That is what is intended for us to experience. But the wonderful promise is that the person who seeks God and responds to God in this intimate way will experience the protective shadow.
Dwelling in or abiding under the shadow of the Almighty. What a beautiful expression. To say that we have the Almighty, the Omnipotent God, who is overshadowing us every moment of our life. Now, I want to focus particularly, we see that we have his appreciation of the Lord.
I will say of Jehovah, the Eternal God, He is my refuge and my fortress. I hope you appreciate Him in this capacity. He wants to be your sanctuary. And He wants to be your great stability. From any approach of anything that is in opposition to your well-being.
God is your great defender. But then notice verse 3. Now, you know a fowler is simply a bird hunter. Someone who catches birds. I've never made much of an effort at that. But anybody who becomes a skilled bird hunter, and of course this is someone who lays snares.
He's not out there with a shotgun. He's there with a snare. And a snare depends upon a lure, a bait. And this is revealing the deceptiveness of evil. The fact that evil is working subtly. We have a great God who is defending us.
Who is our protector. And so evil then seeks to lure us out from our place of safety. To bait us. And I think it's extremely important for each one of us to get to know the bait. And what I mean by that is get to know what baits you.
Become alert, aware to the kinds of temptation, the kinds of areas of life where you personally recognize are a lure to you. Because as another verse says, it's rather futile to lay out a snare in the sight of the bird.
And so if you are already alerted, that's bait. Now, so how does evil work? Well, it always presents something that looks good. That is attractive to you for some reason. That offers a potential. A potential for your good, apparently.
For what would seem to be an advantage to you. But it just hides what it's attached to. And that is what is going to destroy you. And so the more that we learn then to look at every kind of sin and just say, that's a dead end.
That is a dead end. Now, you can see that in other people's lives. You look at them and you say, why can't they see the end? Well, it's because they're caught. They're focused on the bait. When you're focused on the bait, you lose your perspective.
You know, focus is a very, very important thing. It's a necessary thing. Or else you'd be so overwhelmed by everything that's coming into your eyesight. We need focus to be able to manage life. But if you let the wrong thing attract your focus, then the rest of life goes out of focus.
The rest of reality becomes blurred, indistinct. And that is the character of sin. Whether it's in relation to money, there are many, many snares financially. And I'm sure that many times we treat that aspect of our life in a different way than we think of evil ordinarily.
Because it has a legitimacy. But as in many things, sin is always taking something that is good in itself and making it available in a way that is not right for you to have. So whether it's the lotteries, the gambling, the get-rich-quick schemes, all of these things which promise life, promise something that would be attractive to you, but hide the risk, hide the damage that potentially is surrounding it.
And, of course, in the realm of immorality, that is a very powerful influence in our world. And the scriptures are very clear. In corresponding passage to Romans 8 and Colossians 3, it says, Mortify your members which are upon the earth.
And then it talks about fornication, uncleanness, and so on. And so we are to recognize that that which is around us, and it's bait. If you learn to say and to think instinctively, whenever something that is centrally attractive to you is presented to you, that is not yours to have and enjoy, that's bait with a dead end.
We need to program our thinking with a reaction that is a repulsing of that which is drawing us to what could destroy us. And so we have this, he shall deliver thee from the snare of the follower. And so be confident in this, that God is as a protector, he is watching out for us, and he does give us insight.
I remember as a young Christian having many different struggles, becoming very discouraged with my fulfilling the Christian life, my walk with God. And I finally came to a place of despair where I really came to the conclusion that I just wasn't going to be able to do it.
And one particular day that stands out in my memory is when I came home from high school, threw myself on the bed, and prayed that if God didn't have anything better to just take away my life, and I went to sleep.
And when I woke up, I thought, well, God must have something more, something better than the quality of Christian experience that I was knowing at that time. One thing I had gradually learned was that God is a very forgiving God, and confession of wrong is an essential step in breaking the cycle of sin.
In his faithfulness, he not only forgives what has been done wrong, but he also cleanses from unrighteousness. And so there is a renewal of relationship enjoyed with the Father. But I used to wonder, yes, it's wonderful that God forgives and is willing to restore me again and again, but wouldn't it be better if he could prevent me from that miserable experience?
And that's when I began to appreciate some of the teaching that we have in Romans 7 and 8, and that is that the Spirit of God is always faithful to warn. And I believe that he will take particular areas of your life that you have had trouble with, and he will make you aware that every time something is presented to you of evil, as soon as it is brought into your conscious awareness, there is a warning, this is wrong.
That's when you need to respond and recognize that it is wrong, judge it as wrong in his presence, and look to the Lord for his strength, and then you will learn what it is to begin to walk in the Spirit, to respond instantly to his influence, to his truth.
And as we gain sensitivity to the awareness of evil and its approach, and the effect of the Spirit warning and strengthening, that's when we begin to make steps that lead to maturity. As I said, the older we get, we shouldn't be still stumbling over and over and over in the same kinds of things.
We should have become more wise. Our eyes opened, but the problem is sometimes we get to rely upon ourselves. And then we get to learn it all over again, that sin is a dead end. And it's always a dead end.
Whether it's simply mental fantasizing, or whether it is pursuing it in activity, it's always a dead end. And so this passage is outlining the reliability, the strength of our defender. But I'd like to point out something as well, just down towards the end of the chapter.
Verse 14 says, Because he has set his love upon me, now this is really God speaking. Because he has set his love upon me, therefore will I deliver him. I will set him on high because he has known my name.
He shall call upon me and I will answer him. I will be with him in trouble. I will deliver him and honor him. I've been very much impressed in the last few months with the simple reality of the importance of my love to God.
The attention, the attraction of my heart to the Lord Jesus Christ. And what a promise, what a commitment that he makes to us. Because he, you, me, as we set our love upon him, then we have the assurance of this, I will deliver him.
What an assurance. We don't have to live a haphazard, failing life. We can live in the joy of closeness with God and the strength of deliverance over and over again. And it says this, I will set him on high because he has known my name.
That's getting to know God. Getting to know his character, getting to appreciate him. And then, as we see the final expressions, he shall call upon me and I will answer him. That should be a very familiar reality to us.
That we call on him and know the blessing of him answering us.