FBC Daily Devotional – May 4, 2021

Faith Baptist Church

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What a good Tuesday to you, I hope you're doing well this week so far, and your month of May is getting off to a good start.

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In our scriptural reading for today, one of our passages was the 46th

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Psalm. It hadn't been too long ago, about a week, a little over a week ago, I preached on Psalm 46 in our afternoon service, and I believe that recording is still available online.

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If you wanted to go to the church website, you could go back and get that whole message. But I think what

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I want to do today is just give a kind of a synopsis of what I shared in that message, and that is that Psalm 46, it's a very familiar psalm to many of us because of the way it ends.

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It's got that verse, be still and know that I am God, and that's often the thing we zero in on in this particular psalm.

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But really the psalm is divided into three stanzas, and each of these stanzas really kind of emphasizes a different need of the heart.

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So sometimes our heart is fearful, sometimes it's thirsty, and sometimes our heart is anxious.

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And this climate in which we're living today, the culture in which we're living, can fuel each of these senses of our heart.

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We can be filled with fear because of what's going on in our world. We talk about police reform, defunding police, and all of that kind of thing, and just the escalation of crime, and then coupling that with, you know, really assaults on the

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Second Amendment to make it harder for people to be able to have a weapon to protect themselves, for example.

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I mean, I don't know where you are in those things, but the point is that what's going on in our nation is enough to cause us to have a fearful heart.

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And the changes that are taking place are seismic changes. That's why the second verse here in this psalm says, we won't fear even though the earth be removed and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea.

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So even though there are seismic changes going on in the world around me that can incite a fearful heart,

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I don't need to have a fearful heart. Why? Well, the text tells us, because God is our refuge and strength.

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He is a very present help. That means he is a very much here help in these times of upheaval and times that could produce a fearful heart.

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And so the point of the first stanza is that a fearful heart becomes confident in the firm conviction of the

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Lord's presence, that the Lord of hosts is with us. And this first stanza emphasizes his presence, not so much with those statements as they'll come later on in the psalm, but in just the fact that he is a refuge and strength.

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He is a very much here help in trouble. Well, the second stanza, which covers verses four through seven, really kind of address the thirst of our heart.

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And I'm reminded of what Jesus exhorted in the Sermon on the Mount, where we are to hunger and thirst after righteousness and those who do, they will be filled, they'll be satisfied.

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And this second stanza speaks of a river whose streams make glad the city of God.

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And this river that makes the city of God so glad, makes the city of God glad because it's refreshing streams that provide a quenching of the thirst in a very tangible way.

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Now that's the physical imagery that the psalmist is communicating, but he's using it figuratively to address the thirst that needs to be quenched in the heart or in the soul.

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So I guess the question here is, what are you thirsty for? What are you really longing for?

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And again, in our day, in our age where a righteous life, endeavoring to live a holy life is something that is, it's not simply downplayed, it's just flat out ridiculed.

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And the upholding of biblical morality and biblical righteousness is scorned and it's ridiculed and it's mocked.

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And so it's very, very easy for us as believers, followers of Jesus, who long for righteousness to actually have a thirst for that.

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Well, once again, the very present God is the answer for the quenching of that thirst.

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He provides that river that we are longing after. And you remember in the

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New Testament, the Lord Jesus himself talked about providing the rivers of water that come forth from within, the living water that will satisfy the thirst forever.

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Remember that encounter with a woman at the well. Jesus said, whoever drinks of the water that I provide will never thirst again.

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Of course, he wasn't talking about the water out of the well. He was talking about the streams that make glad the city of God.

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So a thirsty heart is quenched in the glad experience of the

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Lord's presence. So again, the focus in this psalm is on the presence, the very real presence of the

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Lord. He is a very present help in time of trouble.

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He who is with us, verse 7 says, the Lord of hosts is with us. The God of Jacob is our refuge.

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He provides the streams for the city of God. And then the last stanza, verses 8 to 11, address the need of an anxious heart.

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An anxious heart. That's why verse 10 says, be still, be calm, rest, be at peace in your heart and know that I am

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God. And the earlier verses talk about beholding the works of the

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Lord, how he makes desolations in the earth. He makes wars to cease to the end of the earth.

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He breaks the bow and cuts the spear entirely and he burns the chariots in the fire. Speaking of those weapons that were very familiar in the context in which

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Psalm 46 was written. But what wars rage against your soul?

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What weapons are being used to attack your heart, your soul, and therefore leaving you anxious?

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You anxious about just the necessities of life? Anxious about a livelihood?

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Anxious about loved ones? Maybe their health or maybe their spiritual condition?

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Are you anxious about your own soul's condition? What are you anxious about? The answer to that anxiety is the very present

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God. Be still, he says, and know that I am God. And then the psalm ends with this repeated refrain.

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The Lord of hosts is with us. The God of Jacob is our refuge.

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And so the answer to the anxious heart is once again the very present God.

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Accept his invitation. He says come and behold his works. Come behold.

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Accept his invitation to come to him. Accept his invitation to see what he has done.

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What he has accomplished already in this world, in your life, in providing for you salvation for your soul and what your soul really needs.

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Come behold the works of the Lord. And then accept his invitation to, for lack of a better word, relax.

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He said be still, be still, and know that I am

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God. Be still that you might actually know him and his work.

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And he will, he will give rest and peace to that anxious soul.

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So again the theme, the thread that ties these three stanzas together is the very present help that our

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Lord is. The Lord of hosts is with us. His presence is the answer to that fearful heart.

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He gives confidence in the firm convictions, conviction of his presence. His presence is the answer to that thirsty heart where he quenches the thirst with the glad experience of his presence.

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And then his presence is also the answer to the anxious heart as it is calmed by a clear vision that the

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Lord of hosts is with us. So I trust and I pray today that you will know, you will know the presence of the

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Lord. So our Father and our God, we do thank you for this psalm and thank you for the encouragement to remember that you, the

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Lord of hosts, are with your people. So everyone listening to me today that knows the Lord Jesus is his personal

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Savior, he can affirm by faith the fact of your presence.

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And I pray that whatever the heart may be feeling, fear, thirst, anxiety, that just the awareness of your presence would meet the need of that heart today.

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And this we ask in Jesus name. Alright, well have a good rest of your