The God of Jacob is Our Stronghold - Brandon Scalf

The year was 1527, and it was arguably the hardest year of Martin Luther's life.

You see, a plague had swept through Wittenberg, Germany, and he had a decision to make.

Would he flee the city and be safe, or would he stay and minister to the people that God had entrusted to him?

Well, the decision that he made, believing that it was the most honoring to the Lord, was that he would stay there and that he would care and minister to the sick.

But, a lot of bad happened. Many people under his care died, his son got sick, and he even got sick.

In fact, for the two weeks that he was sick, it was the sickest he said he had ever been, and that the hand of hell was heavy upon him, and that he was tempted, if he did not give into that temptation, to blaspheme his

God because he felt as though death was at hand.

And it was during that time that he wedded his soul, as it were, to this very psalm,

Psalm 46. In fact, he fell so in love with this psalm during that season of his life that he wrote maybe one of the most famous hymns ever to exist, namely,

A Mighty Fortress Is Our God. And of course, it not only capitalizes on the truth of this psalm,

Psalm 46, but it expands upon it, and we get sweet, sweet refrains, much like this,

A Mighty Fortress Is Our God, Martin Luther said, a bulwark never failing, our helper, he amid the flood of mortal ills prevailing, for still our ancient foe doth seek to work us woe, his craft and power are great, and armed with cruel hate, on earth is not his equal, the world above all earthly powers, no thanks to him abideth, the spirit and the gifts are ours, through him who with us sideth, let goods and kindred go, this mortal life also, the body they may kill,

God's truth abideth still, his kingdom is forever. You see,

Martin Luther understood that no matter the hardship, no matter the pain, no matter the tumult, no matter the ailment,

God is our refuge, and he is our strength. There is no situation, in other words, where we can't lean in to God.

And so, as we meditate on that truth, will you please stand with me for the reading of God's holy, infallible, and all -sufficient word.

I'll begin in verse 1 of Psalm 46, and this is the word of God. God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble, therefore

I will not fear, though the earth should change, and though the mountains shake into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam, and though the mountains quake at its lofty pride, say law.

There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy dwelling places of the

Most High. God is in the midst of her, and she will not be shaken. God will help her when morning dawns, the nations roar, the kingdoms shake, he gives voice, he gives his voice rather, the earth melts.

Yahweh of host is with us. The God of Jacob is our stronghold. Come behold the works of Yahweh, who has appointed desolation in the earth.

He makes wars cease to the end of the earth. He burns the chariots with, he breaks the bow and cuts up the spear.

He burns the chariots with fire. Cease striving and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations.

I will be exalted in the earth. Yahweh of host is with us. The God of Jacob is our stronghold.

Say law. The grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God endures forever.

Amen. Amen. Go ahead and have a seat. As we look at Psalm 46, we come to a superscription which we have already said as we have walked through other psalms that it is in fact inspired by God, thus it must not be rejected.

It says, for the choir director of the sons of Korah, according to Alamoth, a song.

So this is a psalm that would have been given to the choir director of Israel for the people of God to sing, to sing about his excellencies, to sing about his beauties, to sing about his attributes.

More than that is a son, it is of the sons of Korah.

Now the sons of Korah was intended for the director of music to understand what type of psalm it is or who it came from rather and that would be of course the sons of Korah.

That would be the Old Testament Korahites and they were Levites who were descendants of Kohath, the father of Korah.

You can see this lineage play out in 1 Chronicles 6 .22 and 48, 9 .17

as well as 2 Chronicles 20 .19. They produced and performed music while the tabernacle was in the wilderness and after the construction of the temple in Jerusalem.

You can find that information in Numbers chapter 26. More than that it is according to the

Alamoth a psalm. Now no matter what commentary you look at, no matter which historical kind of piece of information you try to get about an

Alamoth, the reality is it's likely, and this is my favorite description, a shrill instrument.

A shrill instrument. It is used in 1 Chronicles 15 .20

and it is an instrument that we no longer employ especially here at Heritage but it is one nonetheless that they would have been familiar with and so the psalm begins after having set aside these musical matters if you will and the background is somewhat obscure.

We don't know exactly what is being talked about in this psalm.

The praise for God in light of this trouble that is being experienced is unknown but the likelihood is that it was probably written after a military victory was won over some sort of foreign and godless power that attempted to siege

Jerusalem. Some scholars believe that it was written after the destruction of the armies of Ammon, Moab, and Mount Seir in 2

Chronicles 20 but it also could have been, according to other scholars, it could have been recorded after the destruction of King Sennacherib and the

Assyrian army during the reign of Hezekiah in 2 Kings chapters 18 through 19.

Regardless, what you need to know is that whatever situation this speaks of, it is one that was not pleasant for the people of God and yet they had great trust in their

God and so as we look at the psalm, it is split into three stanzas and as we look at these stanzas,

I want you to see firstly the protection of God, then the presence of God, and then the purposeful sovereignty of God and each one of these stanzas puts forth the reality that should cause us to praise our triune

God for the safety he provides to his people.

And so look with me firstly at the protection of God. The psalmist here starts off by saying

God is our refuge and strength.

The very first word here is telling us who this psalm is about, that it's a no -brainer, but this psalm is beginning with a different word than what we're used to seeing.

We have walked through Psalm 1 all the way through 8 and then I skipped us all the way to Psalm 46 by the spirits leading and what

I wanted, what is interesting is we're used to seeing God referred to as Yahweh, the covenant

God, which he will be referred to as such again in verse 8 of this psalm, but here the word

God is used and it's a different word. It's not Yahweh, it's not Lord, it's not

Adonai, it's God. In the Hebrew it's Elohim. And Elohim is technically a plural word and what's being emphasized here when this word

God is used and it doesn't mean gods, it's what scholars and linguists of the

Hebrew language have called a majestic plural, right? What they're trying to get across in using

Elohim instead of Yahweh is that he is the almighty God and then by adding the plural nature to it, it's building a case for he's more than the almighty

God. He is the supreme God over absolutely everything.

And so you have this God who exists in three persons, although of course this text is not saying that, but we know that because of the

Bible, the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, and he is the almighty God who reigns supreme over absolutely everything.

So before we even get into the specific attributes being talked about, we're confronted with this

God who is bigger than you think he is. When you meet trouble, God is the almighty, thrice almighty.

And he is in fact our refuge, it says, and strength.

He is our refuge and he is our strength. Now this is something that meant a lot to the people of ancient

Israel, especially those who went to war and may be lost on some of us because we all have our tiny little refuges that we like to go home to, right?

If we go outside this door, something wild happens, we can go to our home, we can go to our favorite place, we can go to grandma's house, or we can do whatever the case may be.

We've got food, we've got shelter. Some of us have been, you know, working on our pantries since COVID, you know, thinking that the world was going to end.

I don't know, right? So we have our own safe little refuges. Mine is my library.

I will go there when I'm feeling down, when I'm feeling happy, when I'm feeling hungry, when I'm feeling any kind of way.

That's where you will find me. But here this is talking about a refuge and strength that exists in a situation where a refuge and strength may not be found, namely in war.

Or for Martin Luther, as we talked about in the introduction, during the plague, during this hardship season where there actually is nowhere to run, the trouble is it's found itself coming through the front door.

And it's saying that God is not only almighty, but that he is an unconquerable fortress.

And it's a mighty fortress. That he is a walled city of protection.

So you see here, God is not a God who just exists, but he is a God who protects his people, who loves his people with a strength here that it says is unparalleled.

There is nothing that can thwart God's plan. There is nothing that can hold him back. There is nothing that can harm him.

And he is your, as the people of God, refuge and his strength.

This is why Paul can say later that we are not to have any sort of anxieties, that we should put those things to death.

Why have an anxious soul when we have a

God of refuge who is our refuge and our strength and who, according to the next part of this verse, is a very present help in trouble.

So this God is not the God of the deists. He's not the God of the functional deists who thinks when trouble arises that God just doesn't get involved in human affairs.

That he doesn't care about your situation. That he doesn't care about the trouble that has found you.

In fact, he is a very present help in trouble. He is there all the time in every way for you.

And for you. And for you. And for us.

Right? This is certainly a corporate psalm speaking about the people of God in total.

But it is also speaking of the individual because he's there for each of us as well.

And he is very present. He's like a brother. He sticks closer than a friend.

In other words, he's there when you need him the most. He never leaves you afflicted.

He never leaves you downtrodden. He never leaves you hurt. At least in the eschatological sense.

He will wipe every tear from your eye. And he is working now.

Presently. And was working then presently to wipe tears from eyes.

Helping them in trouble. Now, this word in the Hebrew, trouble, is an interesting word. It means a tight place.

A restricted place. A tied up place. A place that is narrow. A place that is cramped in nature.

That is easy to be attacked. There is this war language going on here. And it's saying that even in the most easiest situation to be conquered, to be hurt,

God is presently helping you. Do you know that? That's what's being said.

That's what's being said. And then he transitions into verse 2 and he starts promoting this though theology.

And what do I mean by though theology? I mean, once you know who your God is, namely that he is a refuge and strength, that he is a present help, not one who's far away, not looking the other way, then you know some things.

Though other things happen, God's still going to be there. Like if he's always almighty, if he's always a refuge, if he's always a strength, and if he's always very present, willing to help you in all of your needs, then you know though no matter whatever happens, he is there.

He uses it four times in the next two verses. That's two times per verse.

Or two times per sentence. That's a lot of those. Oh, that we would have more though theology, right?

What if we woke up in the morning and we understood who our God was, we believed it, and we went outside our front door, and though whatever happened, we would march forward understanding and believing that our

God is, and he is a refuge and strength, and that he is a very present help, and no matter what trouble we have.

He goes on, therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change, and though the mountains shake into the heart of the sea, and though its waters roar and foe, and though the mountains quake at its lofty pride.

What do we have here? A change of disposition because of some truth that has found its way into the heart of those who look and seek after God.

All right? No fear.

It's removed. It's gone. And that's the way we should be, people.

People of God, when we see a

God who is bigger than our problems, then why would we fear?

No matter what comes at us. I mean, the idea here, he's speaking of the earth changing, right?

He's speaking about mountains shaking and falling into the heart of the sea, waters roaring and foaming. There's chaos.

There's complete and utter destruction and disarray, and yet he can stand and say, the psalmist, no matter what is happening around me,

I will not fear because I know who my God is, and I know he's my refuge and strength. I want you to think about it this way.

Children, would you look at me? I want you to really pay attention here. Have you ever been in a really scary situation?

Maybe you were fearful that something was going to happen to you, or maybe someone was bullying you.

Maybe that was happening, and you were scared that you might get hurt or you might have something happen to you, and you were really scared until you went and got dad, because you know dad loves you, and you know he's bigger than whatever problem that can come your way, and you run, and you grab dad, and dad comes, and he puts an end to whatever that scary situation is, or he takes you out of that scary situation, and now you feel safe.

You have no reason to fear, right? You've been in that situation. That's what's being said in this psalm, that God is a

God of protection, and when we understand that God is a loving father, that he's a refuge and strength, and that he whisks us away to safety, there's nothing to fear.

There's nothing to fear. Well, the psalmist goes on with this though theology, and he does so by keeping his eyes on God, and friends, is this not true of the people of God?

When we keep our eyes on God, the fear begins to dissipate. I mean, I think you can remind yourselves maybe of a story in the

New Testament of the apostle Peter. The apostle Peter was weak like you and me.

He's frail, quite stupid at times. He even wound up in his foolishness betraying the

Lord Jesus, though he repents and is restored to ministry, and we're all beneficiaries of his ministry on this earth even, was, as history records, whether it's true or not is another story for you to dig into, crucified upside down because he did not want to be honored in the same way that the

Lord Jesus did. And there's a story where Peter is on this boat, and Jesus is walking on the water, and Peter is coming to him, and then he realizes, oh, yeah, that's something you can do, but I can't do.

I can't do the walking on the water thing, but, you know, hey,

I mean, I don't know what happened on the boat, right? What do you do when one of your best friends who you trust to lead you through spiritual journeys is now making it pretty evident that he's

God, and that he's the Messiah, and he's walking on water, but Jesus says, come, Peter, come onto the water, and Peter does what any rational human being would do in that moment.

Don't, I don't know about that. I don't think it's going to work all that well. This is the Brandon Scroft translation. It's not going to find this in LSB, but I promise you the story is roughly the same, okay?

And so Peter begins to walk on the water, and to his amazement, while he's got his eyes on Jesus, he's not fearing, and he's walking on water.

Now, this is not a proof text that you'll be able to walk on the water if you have faith when you get home, so don't fill the bathtub up and see what you can do.

Just believe that happened once. It's okay, so he's walking on the water. He's not fearing

God, or he's not fearing the water because he's looking at the God -man, Jesus Christ, and he's putting one foot in front of the other until what?

It begins to sink, and why did he sink? Because he got afraid, and he took his eyes off the

God -man. You see, the reason that we fear is because we do not believe that God is actually big enough to squash our enemies, not big enough to save us in times of trouble, not to be enough for us, and so we fall like Peter because of our fear and because our gaze grows dim.

The second thing the psalmist shows us is God's presence, so not only does he protect us against anything that might threaten us for his glory and our good, he also is present.

Yes, he's very present in trouble, but he's very present in our midst as well, and that is even more beautiful, right?

Because it's one thing to have a huge, gigantic king who can come take care of business, but it's a whole nother thing to have that king dwell with us.

So he goes on and says, there is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy dwelling place of the

Most High. The idea here is that there is a nourishing river that streams toward the people of God, right?

The city of God is filled with those who are the people of God, and it's the holy dwelling place of the

Most High, certainly speaking here of Jerusalem. And there's this river that comes from God that nourishes the people of God because God is there.

And he goes on in verse 5, God is in the midst of her, her being the city of God, the kingdom of God, and now we could say the church.

God is in the midst of her and she will not be shaken.

She will not be moved. She will not be hurt. She will not be hunted.

She will not be shaken. Like the chaotic earth above in verses 1 through 3 that is shaking and falling,

God's people will stand because why? God is in the midst of her.

This is why in Matthew 16, Jesus can say that the gates of hell will not prevail against his church, speaking to that same

Peter. Where God is, nourishment is.

And this is particularly helpful when understanding the war language, right?

Because in order to survive any sort of situation, you need water.

I don't know if you knew that or not. You can go quite a while without food, but you can't go very long without water.

As a matter of fact, when, you know, Jerusalem was sieged in AD 70 by the

Roman Empire, their tactics were often to surround the city and cut off all of their water sources.

So that way, even if they couldn't beat them in battle, they had already won because all of their ability to sustain their own life was taken from them.

And so checkmate. Oftentimes they would use that as, not in the situation in AD 70, but in war in general, they would use that as a negotiation tactic.

If you surrender and you fall underneath our rule, we will turn on the water supply that we have so keenly turned off.

And here, he is saying that no matter where you are, God has living water for his people.

And there are a lot of New Testament things we can attach that to, and we can get, you know,

Augustinian about all of that, and we can, you know, paint all sorts of pictures, and some of that would be good, and some of that would be, you know, out of this world fictitious.

But the reality is the same. God makes sure that his people are cared for, that they will not be shaken, and that he says next, they will be helped.

They will be helped. God will help. You see this in verse one, a very present help. Verse five, the second half of the verse,

God will help her when morning dawns. God will help her when the morning dawns.

What's significant about this particular sentence? Well, you may not know this because you may not read

The Art of War. You may not be a veteran. You may not know much about tactics.

But the reality is the dawn is when people are most vulnerable to attack.

They're waking up. They don't have all their supplies ready. And so what happens is you want to get in there before they have a chance to gear up and get ready for the day, right?

Nighttime was the enemy, especially back then. You know, now we have night vision. We have all these other things that we can employ.

But back then, they didn't. And so the dark was the enemy of warfare. And so you were waiting for day.

But unless you had a little bit of sunlight, it was hard to prepare for the rest of the day. And so here it's saying that God will help her even when she is most vulnerable.

You see, where God is, things flourish. Where God is, things grow. Where God is,

God's people are helped. And that is my prayer. Yes, for the kingdom. Yes, for the church at large.

But even for just little heritage, that God would be so honored and so saturated in this place that he would help us even in our most vulnerable of moments.

Because we seek to honor him. We seek to look to him. And no matter how inept we are, no matter how much we have to grow and all the ways that we need to grow, that God would continue to help us when the morning dawns.

And it goes on in verse six, the nations roar, the kingdom shake, right? There's all these other things going on outside.

And then Yahweh will give his voice in verse six.

And when Yahweh speaks, it matters. When God speaks, it changes everything.

When the Lord lifts up his voice to speak, it drowns out every other voice.

When God speaks, listen, he says, the earth melts.

Yahweh of hosts is with us. The God of Jacob is our stronghold.

Now, before we pause and move to the next stanza, which is what Selah means, it's a meditative pause.

God gives us two ways to think about him. Firstly, that his name is Yahweh of hosts.

He is Yahweh of many armies. And he is with us.

As a matter of fact, this is a refrain that will be repeated in verse 11. You'll see,

Yahweh of hosts is with us. The God of Jacob is our stronghold. In other words, this is the chorus, right?

This is the thing with the hook. This is the thing that you're supposed to remember the most. This is the thing where you start stamping your feet and approval.

This is the part where you throw your hands in the air, and this is the part where you lean in the most.

He is the covenant -keeping God, Yahweh. He's not just the almighty

God, as represented in the majestic plural in verse one, but he is the one who keeps steadfast, loving kindness for thousands of generations.

He is the one who moves mountains and seas for his people. He is the one who orchestrates history that we might be saved.

He is the one who binds himself by his own promises to uphold the salvation of those whom he chooses.

He's not some distant God. He's not just a God who's powerful that has some sort of liking toward people he decides to like.

He is the one who loves, and he is the one who will not go away no matter how much you want him to go away, and that is to your amazement and to your glory, as Paul would say if he was writing in the book of Ephesians.

It's beautiful. This Yahweh, this covenant -keeping God who has armies of angels is with us.

We have nothing to fear. He keeps building on this theme of him being something that we should revere, and not only revere, but trust him and be the cause of us not being afraid.

He says then the God of Jacob is our stronghold. Unless you didn't understand Yahweh, he goes on to just inject a ton of history into the matter.

The God of Jacob is, in fact, our stronghold. In this very moment, he is reminding the people of God that God has been with them since the beginning, since the beginning of the whole story, and he's not going anywhere.

The third thing that I want you to see now that we have seen God's protection and God's presence, I want you to see

God's purposeful sovereignty. God's purposeful sovereignty.

Now, the psalmist invites everyone to come and look at who God is, as if he hasn't already been doing that, but he's making it more explicit here and now.

He says, come behold the works of Yahweh. Come behold the works of this covenant -keeping

God who has loving kindness for thousands of generations, for an innumerable amount of people.

It's an invitation to stand in awe. It's an invitation to be shipwrecked, as it were.

It's an invitation to be thrown to the ground in amazement, to lay prostrate before him and his beauty and his glory and his amazingness.

Now, of course, what does he mean by works? Well, he means a lot of things by works, specifically as it relates to warfare, the desolation that he brings upon the earth, even with small armies.

The Old Testament is riddled with God achieving incredible military feats with not a lot of men and not a lot of weapons.

But more than that, he's speaking of his work in creation. The Psalms, up to this point, have been littered with the idea that God is the creator

God, that he has brought everything that is into existence. In the beginning,

God. In the beginning, Elohim, majestic plural, created.

And then he goes on, everything that exists. And then he goes on and talks about how, in the other

Psalms, the heavens declare of his glory. Psalm 8, right? And yet he's mindful of man.

What another way to think about his work. So it is his work of creation, but it's also the work of redemption that is on display for the people of Israel, most certainly, but also his church.

By the time this Psalm would have been written, it would have been commonplace to hear the story about how

God brought his people out of the land of Egypt from which they were slaves. And even though there was this sea that was roaring and foaming,

I don't know, think about, right, the first part of the Psalm, where they saw no way forward.

God split that sea and his people walked through as if nothing happened while the enemies were drowned behind them.

His people were redeemed. And God is continuing to redeem, through his son Jesus Christ, countless people.

And depending on your eschatology, it will continue to advance tenfold.

And by the way, if that's not your eschatology, get a new one. We're not defeatists around here.

God is a refuge and strength and a very present help in times of trouble, amen? Right, so we want to make sure that we are believing a

God who can, but also personal histories. I mean, think about every person in this room who bears the name of Christ.

Every one of you, God has worked in your life in a very beautiful, pointed, intimate, and supernatural way.

He has, as Ephesians 2, taken your dead heart and caused you to walk in a newness of life.

He's resurrected the spiritual dead, and he has done that miraculously.

One of the things I'm obsessed about, this is moving beyond this Psalm, but as we contemplate the work of God, you know, one of the things that I love to read about is the

Reformation, of course, but one thing that really I love to study is the revivals of the 16th and 17th century, and even the revival that took place in England when

Charles Spurgeon started to pastor at New Street Park Baptist Church, and then which later became the

Metropolitan Tabernacle. And the work that not only God does personally, but will do from time to time as he sees fit to awaken dead sinners in mass is absolutely mind -blowing.

Nobody thought revival was going to be happening at any of those times, and yet there it was. And we ought to believe that God can work in that amazing way now.

Amen? And we ought to work and labor to that end, and it is not us who works, it is

God who works, and he uses us to do it. And we say, thank you, God, for including us in your work, and we get to work.

And so he's inviting in them, come behold, come look at this God who does all of these things that is amazing, that is beautiful, that is completely other, completely amazing.

Specifically in context, he's speaking of the desolations that he brings upon the earth. Look, verse 9, he makes wars to cease to the end of the earth.

So who wins wars? Whoever God decides wins the wars, right?

He breaks the bow and he cuts up the spears. He burns the chariots with fire.

In other words, what he's trying to get the people to understand as he's writing this psalm, and as he understands himself, and it's causing him to praise

God for it, is that even if there's war, more troubles, more chaos, more foaming waters, as it were,

God is in control of that. I once heard a church planter who planted a church in Camden, New Jersey, which historically is one of the deadliest places to live because of gang violence and so on.

And I remember people asking him, they said, why in the world would you go plant a church in one of the most dangerous places in the

United States of America? And he said this, and I'll never forget it.

He said, if I get hit with a bullet, I trust that it was God's bullet because there are only

God's bullets. You see, he understood

Psalm 46 like Martin Luther understood Psalm 46. There's nothing outside of God's control.

Now, verse 10, as we are looking now at his purposeful sovereignty, he is sovereign over all.

He begins to speak, right? The psalmist goes away. He fades into the background, and now

Yahweh himself is speaking, Elohim, the almighty God, thrice.

And he says, cease striving and know that I am God, and I will be exalted among the nations.

I will be exalted in the earth. You see, here we have a universal command that really is a rebuke to the rebellious and to the restless heart and to the ones who refuse to lay down their fear and see their great

God. Now, I know that you have seen this on coffee cups at Mardell's. You've seen it in their t -shirts hanging up on the wall.

And really what people seem to think when they see this verse is something that actually, you know, is very soft and tender.

That's very, you know, cease trying so hard. You know, you're really trying to be a great

Christian, but maybe you should just quit trying to do that, right? Cease.

Cease striving. Cease moving forward, right?

Like, just chill and trust God, because God, well, he's just gonna do what he wants to do.

He's gonna grow you. He's gonna get you through this.

Well, much like the coffee cup verses, it doesn't do justice to the text.

And what's being said here is not chill, dude. You'll be all right.

It's not a contemplative call for reflection, but it's a redemptive call to surrender and to know

God personally and intimately before his swift judgment is unleashed.

All of a sudden, this coffee cup doesn't seem so sweet in context, right?

Right? When we kick verses out of their context, kicking and screaming, they obtain kind of their own little meaning, right?

This happens with like, you know, when

Paul says, I can do all things through Christ who strengthened me. And you know, basketball players put it on their jersey and they're like,

I can win the finals because God is with me. Well, dude, you are godless in every way, and he doesn't care who wins the

NBA finals unless it serves his purpose. And so whether you fit in in that or not, you know, what he's saying is if you have to suffer, you can suffer.

Paul is saying, right, he's in prison and he's saying, I can do this, right?

I can be beat. I can be abandoned. I can have, you know, in the jail cells, the restrooms were just holes cut in the top of the cell.

And so people's defecation, as it were, would just fall, right? I can do,

I can handle this. Paul is saying, he's not saying I'm going to win the NBA championship. I'm not going to run this track and field situation, right?

And so here he is giving this universal call, cease striving, know that I am God. Actually, striving is a supplied word in the

Hebrew. It just says stop, like Psalm 2 kind of, right?

Stop and know that I am God. And I do all that's been said thus far.

I'm in charge of war. I'm in charge of plague. I'm in charge of calamity. I'm in charge of every single thing.

And if you do not get that, you are in big trouble. Stop, he says, and know that I am

God. And this is what he says next, I will be exalted. Not, you know, if things go right, things will be exalting to God.

No, I will be exalted. I will see to it. It will happen among the nations.

They will sing my praises. They will love me. Habakkuk 2 .14 says that eventually, that there is coming a day when the knowledge of the glory of God will cover the earth as the waters cover the seas.

How much water is that? All of it, right? Everything's going to get wet.

He says, I will be exalted among the nations and I will be exalted in the earth. There will not be any utterance out of anyone's mouth, but praise to me or recognition that I am the

Lord. This is why the New Testament authors say that every knee will bow. This is actually according to the Old Testament, but either way, every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is

Lord. There's coming a day. There's coming a day.

And why can we be sure of that? Well, because God is sovereign. God is sovereign.

God's protection, his presence, and his purposeful sovereignty are present.

It is God's will that he will demonstrate his sovereignty in the earth and that he is sovereign over all the earth.

He will be acknowledged, he says, and he will be accepted, and you can't do anything about it.

And lest you forget, he reminds you further, repeating the refrain,

Yahweh, the covenant -keeping God who keeps steadfast love for thousands. Yahweh of hosts is with us.

The God of history, the God of Jacob is our stronghold.

So what do we do with all of this text here? Well, we use it to praise

God and more than that, we use it to look forward to Jesus Christ.

Who is our ultimate refuge and strength. You see, God's protection, his presence, and his purpose sovereignty are most clearly seen and most beautifully seen at the cross.

You see, whether you know it or not, you may not be in a war. You may not be standing alongside

David in battle. You may not have a plague at your front door like Martin Luther had, and you may not be feeling all of this chaos that's being spoken about.

But if that's true, then you probably already went through it or it's going to meet you someday.

But more than that, by virtue of being born into this world, you are born into another war, namely a spiritual war where you, if you are not in Christ, are being bombarded on every side.

Ephesians chapter 2 says, by the world, the flesh, and the devil. You are on every side being destroyed.

But at the cross, we see that he deals with that problem and he protects his people from the wrath that is due us because of our rebellion.

We see his presence as he comes in human form, puts on skin as the

God -man, Jesus Christ, the righteous. And he uses his purposeful sovereignty, his powers over creation, his sovereignty over it to make sure that he would be killed by the hands of lawless men and betrayed by Judas, his friend.

So that you and I could echo along with this psalmist that our God is a refuge and strength.

And though we spit in his face and though, yes, we are hemmed in on all sides, we participate in this hemming, as it were, because we delight in the chaos and we want nothing to do with God.

And he says, come, hide in me. And friends, even if you know this

Christ, he still says come and have no fear because Christ is

God. Do you have this vision of God?

I pray that you do. And I pray that as you reflect upon God and his

Christ and what he has done on the cross to protect, to be present with you and to sovereignly orchestrate salvation for you, that you would be able to exclaim the wonderful though theologies present in this text.

There's nothing that can harm you when you already have the best gift you can have, namely not salvation from a war, but from yourself, from the flesh and the devil.