The Lord, Our Stronghold

We'll open your Bibles please to the 91st Psalm, Psalm 91, gives no superscript to give us a context or an occasion, no authorship is given, and we will speak about that as we delve into this glorious text, but for now we will begin by reading it, if you would stand for the reading of God's Word, I will read all 16 verses of Psalm 91,

He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will abide in the shadow of the Almighty. I will say to the

Lord, My refuge and My fortress, My God in whom I trust. For He will deliver you from the snare of the fowler and from the deadly pestilence.

He will cover you with His pinions, and under His wings you will find refuge. His faithfulness is a shield and buckler.

You will not fear the terror of the night, nor the arrow that flies by day, nor the pestilence that stalks in darkness, nor the destruction that wastes at noonday.

A thousand may fall at your side, ten thousand at your right hand, but it will not come near you. You will only look with your eyes and see the recompense of the wicked.

Because you have made the Lord your dwelling place, the Most High who is My refuge, no evil shall be allowed to befall you, no plague come near your tent.

For He will command His angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways. On their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone.

You will tread on the lion and on the adder, the young lion and the serpent you will trample underfoot.

Because He holds fast to Me in love, I will deliver Him. I will protect Him because He knows My name.

When He calls to Me, I will answer Him. I will be with Him in trouble, I will rescue Him and honor Him.

With long life I will satisfy Him and show Him my salvation." God bless the reading, and now may it be

His will, the proclamation of His Word, so please be seated. I've always been a little embarrassed with myself, how poor

I am at picking titles for messages. And perhaps as some say it's because I pick them too early, and I think it's really a problem with just the imagination, the storehouse of titles that I have in the mental inventory

I call this message, The Lord Our Stronghold, which indeed He is. There's nothing untruthful or wrong about that.

There's so many places in the Bible where we could support a title like that. I sort of looking back wish

I had called this a hymn of encouragement, a hymn of fortification.

The psalm gives us really no what we call occasion. And yet this is a psalm that brings fortification, that brings encouragement, that brings strengthening to your soul when you need it.

It's a reminder of the good things of God. It's a reminder to you from this choir, which

I'll speak about in a few moments, to the soul, if you will, of this one who speaks back to them, needing this encouragement, needing this strengthening.

This is a psalm for all of us. When someone comes to us needing that encouragement, setting out in some great endeavor in the name of the

Lord, and how do we then as a church, as brothers and sisters in the Lord, encourage and strengthen them?

Psalm 91 will tell us. And you, when you are the one stepping out in faith, going to do

God's will, leaving the home and beginning some great endeavor in the

Lord with His help, by faith in Him, this is what we should expect.

This is what we can even ask for in Psalm 91. It's a hymn of strengthening.

It's the inner man of the one who needs this reminder of the good things of God, and how

He is with you every step of the way as our steps are directed by His Word and obedience to His Spirit.

Psalm 91 is thought by many to be completely spoken by the psalmist, by this one who needs the strengthening.

And as it were, he is speaking to himself. We've all heard this term, speaking or preaching the gospel to ourselves.

Well, this is what many commentators think is what's happening here, is the psalmist speaking to himself, reminding himself, he who dwells, meaning

I myself, as I dwell in the shelter of the Most High, and so forth. Others think it is the psalmist, our adventurer, if you will, stepping out and preaching this to the assembly.

And he is telling them his experience of God, and how good God has been to rescue him in all his trials, and that God is indeed a refuge.

He's a stronghold. He's a fortress. He is an eagle with long wings under whose shadow you can abide and be protected.

I take it a little differently, not radically so, we won't change the meaning, but I want to explain to you where I take the voices, or where I think the voices here interact, and who's speaking when.

Because it will be important to the way I apply this, because I think this psalm applies to you, the church, and the encouragement that you, the church, are to give others when they are stepping out on some, as I said, great adventure or endeavor.

Perhaps even, any time you know one of your pastors is going to endeavor to come to this pulpit, some of the words in this psalm will be words that you can speak to the man.

I mean, with your mouth, verbally, to him. Let me encourage you, let me fortify you, or at least pray them on his behalf.

So here's what I think, and here's how I'm going to preach that this morning. Just a little bit of housekeeping for you.

Verses 14 through 16, with, because he holds fast to me in love, and so forth, the end of verse 16, that's clearly

God. So God is one of the voices. He responds at the end of this psalm. That's him. That's the

Lord. That is Yahweh. I believe, and I'm going to take it this way, that verse 1, and then verse 3, through the first half of verse 9, and then verse 10 to verse 13, is a choir of sorts.

It's the church calling out to this one, riding out to do whatever he has been set by the

Lord to do. And they are calling out the encouragement to him. That's the main voice. That's the most common voice in this psalm.

And then this one who is receiving this encouragement, he's the one who speaks in verse 2, I will say to the

Lord, and so forth, and he's the one who speaks at the end of verse 9, the Most High, who is my refuge.

Is a psalm a choir of encouragement, of strengthening?

And how much do we not need to be reminded of how good and how faithful and how powerful the

Lord our God is? Not seeing him, yet we believe him. We don't see him, yet we love him.

And sometimes in our human frailty, I should say often in our human frailty, what do we need to hear?

We need to hear a brother and sister who, like us, can't see Jesus until he comes, which isn't now.

And yet, we need to hear the encouragements that he brings us through each other.

If the psalm is inspired scripture, there is no doubt, despite not having an appellation or an author who takes credit for it, the psalm has a hallowed place in our redemptive history when

Jesus Christ, he, true Israel, accomplishing in the wilderness and being tempted and succeeding everywhere where physical

Israel, the first Israel in the Exodus, had failed. This psalm is a psalm that the devil,

Satan, our adversary, cited to the Lord in order to tempt him to go against God's will.

That's in Matthew chapter 4, I believe it's verses 5 and 6, I might have gotten the verse numbers wrong, but it is in verse 4, verse 5 of chapter 4, verse 3, that's what it calls him for, where the devil tells

Jesus, for he will command his angels concerning you to guard you, and all your ways. On their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone.

Of course, that was to tempt Jesus to take his messiahship now ahead of God's plan and throw himself off the pinnacle.

And this is the verse that the devil cited against him, and of course, Jesus Christ responded, it is written you shall not test the

Lord your God. Now bring that up that this is in the temptations in the wilderness, it is the middle of the three major temptations that the devil brought upon Jesus Christ, so we understand that this psalm has to do with that kind of fortification against our temptations.

Fortification to stop, to not be tempted, to retract, to draw back.

We are not those who draw back as the author of the Hebrews says. The whole temptation of Jesus Christ in the wilderness was him reenacting and succeeding

Israel's failures in the wilderness. And right in the middle of those temptations, chapter, excuse me,

Psalm 91 and verses 11 and 12 are what was used against the Lord.

Now the Lord didn't say, well you've got this out of context, you used the wrong one, nothing like that. And by the way devil, you better get something that's actually inspired scripture.

No, this is inspired scripture and it was used powerfully to tempt our Lord to take his eyes off God his father.

So here's our hymn of encouragement. Here's the choir that you, the church, should be to those who need that strengthening or the choir that you needing the strengthening should be asking for.

He who dwells in the shadow of the Most High will abide in the shadow of the Almighty. I will say to the

Lord, my refuge and my fortress, my God in whom I trust. Did you get the different names for God that are in there?

They're so significant. He who dwells in the shadow of the Most High, Elion, the one who is there, apart, he's not here, he's up, further, distant from us in the shelter of the

Most High, shelter speaking of protection, speaking of the shade that looks over you. He will abide in the shadow of the

Almighty, Shaddai, the Almighty, the omnipotent God to whom and from whom nothing can be kept.

Whatever he wills, he does in heaven or on earth, El Shaddai. So what do we have a picture of here? This God whom the choir is singing to this psalmist, to this adventurer, that this

God, this Elion who is so high and so above and so other than you and me, the

Almighty, the Shaddai comes and with intimate and close ministry protects those who he would have going about his business.

It's not dissimilar to what the Apostle Paul was told by Jesus Christ when he was in Corinth.

And Jesus Christ came to him in a vision and said, do not stop, but keep speaking in my name for I have many people in the city who are mine.

This kind of encouragement, this kind of encouragement that strengthens you in the inner man and keeps you on the course, this reminder that he is

Most High. You can't climb up to heaven and find him, much less pull him down.

How does he become the Almighty? How does he become Shaddai to cover you personally and protect you?

It's the goodness of God in Jesus Christ. In Christ, God became man.

In Christ, God revealed man. Christ, the God -man, all God, all man, never ceasing to be one or the other and the two never being confused.

This is how Elyon, the Most High, is Shaddai, the

Almighty, for you. If you know the Lord Jesus Christ, if you're in his will, dwell in the shelter, abide in the shadow.

These are constantive verbs. This is not a one -time shot. This is not a foxhole conversion.

I need God now. I've ignored him all my life. I've gotta get saved now because I need help this moment. No, this is a constant, abiding, a durative sort of a life.

One that looks to Christ for the small things and comes to him for the big things as a familiar one. It's like, remember when you helped me with that flat tire,

Lord? Now my house is burning down. Do you remember I came to you for this minor scuffle with my son?

Now I have a bigger problem. This Lord with whom we're familiar, with whom, Lord willing, you are familiar.

Abiding under the shelter of the Almighty. And he responds to this hymn.

This is one of the two places where the psalmist enters into this. This is his voice now. I will say to the

Lord, that's Yahweh. I will say to the Lord, my refuge and my fortress, my God in whom

I trust. God is from Elohim. And it's the possessive in the Hebrew, Elohai, my

God. My God. That's what Paul says in Galatians 2 .20.

The son of God who loved me and gave himself up for me.

That sounds like an egotist. That God would pay attention to you, little man. You, you lousy sinner.

This is what the scripture says. That God does take pity on sinners. And that Jesus Christ is the son of God who loved me.

And if you're in him, if you have faith to believe, you, and gave himself up for you. This is the

God spoken of, my God, my Elohim, the creator in whom I trust. And just above that,

I'll say to the Lord. And that's Yahweh. Yahweh is the name of God that was revealed to Moses in Exodus chapter four.

Yahweh is the name of God that is his faithfulness and his unchangeableness to his word, to his covenants.

Now, Elyon will not change any more than Elohim would. Shaddai would not change any more than Godness say.

Our banner would change. God does not change. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

And yet, that name Yahweh particularly speaks to his unchangeableness to his word, his faithfulness to the word, to the covenant that he's given us.

He never changes. And so when he calls upon the Lord, he says, I will say to the

Lord, this Lord who is now my refuge and fortress, Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever, will always be my refuge and my fortress.

The choir comes back and talks to him about the hidden dangers that he may face, hidden to him, things he may not see, ambushes, if it's a military motif, ambushes coming to him.

If it's other than that, it could be pestilence, disease, those sorts of things, all the dangers he's going to face.

And the choir sings out to him. Now, as I read these verses, I want you to think, perhaps if Moses wrote this, maybe it was

Joshua with his army riding out to the Amalekites. And here, if you can imagine it this way, we don't have scriptural support for it, so I'm kind of drawing a picture on both sides where the army is going out to meet the

Amalekites or all the Israelites, singing a song like this to remind them that God is their protection, that God is their refuge, that God is their strength.

They're under the shade of El Shaddai, and the Almighty is with them as they go out in his will.

Think of it that way. And here are these soldiers, perhaps with some trepidation, perhaps remembering the faithless spies and their report of how huge those giants were, and the size of those boulders, or those bricks that make the walls of the cities.

Maybe just a little bit of trepidation, maybe more. For he will deliver you from the snare of the fowler and from the deadly pestilence, for he will cover you with his pinions, and under his wings you will find refuge.

His faithfulness is a shield and buckler. And there's much of the military motif. We could even think of David riding out against the

Philistines, that sort of thing, with his people, the ladies perhaps, throwing flowers in front of the men as they march forward and singing this song of encouragement to them.

He will cover you with his pinions. Those are the outer edges of an eagle's wings. So here's this

El Yon, this high and mighty one, who as Shaddai, as the

Almighty, covering them under his protective wing. We don't know what tomorrow will bring, do we?

Jesus Christ told us very plainly that tomorrow has enough trouble for tomorrow. And who knows what tomorrow's going to bring to you?

God, God alone, this God in whose shelter and shade we can dwell.

This God whose protection is constant. This God, this Yahweh, who never changes. He will deliver from the snare of the fowler, the booby trap.

You ever see the bird cages? It has some sort of a trip line on it so when the bird comes in, perhaps like a mousetrap today, and they take the food, the thing closes down on them.

It would be a more sophisticated trap to trap somebody like a Joshua or a David if this is indeed military motif.

But what the idea here is, he, God, Yahweh, El Yon, El Shaddai, will deliver.

He will warn. He who began the good work in you will complete it until the day of Christ Jesus.

He's there with you. He's covering you with his pinions. It could just as easily have said angels, and angels will come up in a little while.

Now of course, God doesn't have a wing any more than he has a hand or a nose. Those figures are given throughout the

Bible. There's a metaphor. It's a word picture. And yet the picture stands behind, or standing behind the picture,

I should say, is literal truth. So God doesn't have wings?

Does that mean the whole thing should be tossed out as just a silly poem? Of course not. Of course not.

God's wings, as it were, are the covering. He is looking over you.

And where you go, this great shade, if you want to think of it as an eagle, is following and watching every step.

His faithfulness is a shield and a buckler. The shield was the larger instrument, sort of like the shield of faith, that Paul speaks of in Ephesians chapter six, verse 10.

The buckler was a smaller shield, which was attached to the wrist, and was used for more close kind of fighting.

And I think the idea here is what we call a merism, where it says everything between the two, the larger and the smaller, is included.

Read Ephesians chapter six, verses 10 through 20, in the full armor of God, and see how complete that armor is.

See how every step of the way, you have something to employ to keep you on that track.

It was what the psalmist is being told here, as he marches out, as he goes out.

Perhaps, as I said before, something is, can we say mundane? As your pastor,

Conley or myself, even our guest Brian, approaching this pulpit to preach to you the gospel.

Mundane, is that what I said? Something so everyday common? To preach the gospel of the

Lord Jesus Christ? We need this strengthening. We need this church, this choir, to sing out

Jesus' praises and to remind us how great and how grand he really is.

And how minute and how close is his protection of his people. But even so, it's the unknowns that scare us, is it not?

It's the unknowns, it's not knowing tomorrow, it's not knowing what's going on in our body. I had this recent experience, as you all know.

I just got out of the hospital a few days ago. I was so surprised from the ER to be told

I'm going to the hospital. I've told a few of you, I said, well, I can't go to the hospital. They said, why?

I said, well, because I was just gonna be in the ER for a while. All I have is my phone, a novel I'm reading, and my wallet.

I don't have a Bible, I don't have anything to read, I don't have anything to do. They said, you're going to the hospital.

And I started to fear. I found, you know, medical professionals are, well, they're medical professionals,

I am not. And they can be very serious about things. And also, you get this gnawing fear, kind of low down here, have you ever gotten that?

When some unknown comes upon you, you don't know where it's going, you don't know where it came from. And what are you left with?

You're left with believing what the Word of God says about not fearing.

It's all in God's hands, and your faith gets put to the test. At a time like that, perhaps you have time to make a call.

Call a brother or sister, call a pastor, call a church, and hear these words. At verse five, you will not fear the terror of the night, nor the arrow that flies by day.

The terror, the unseen, the unknowns that can scare us so bad because they're unknown, the arrow that flies by night.

Think of a man behind his shield, and just hoping he's got enough of that shield covering enough of his body that one of those arrows is not going to find a weak spot or an uncovered spot and do him damage or death.

Nor the pestilence that stalks in the darkness, we sort of covered that. The destruction that wastes at noonday, night and day.

Arrows and pestilence, whatever it is. The reminder here is God is with you.

And if God be for us, because of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, who can be against us?

Who? A thousand may fall at your side, that's verse seven, 10 ,000 at your right hand, but it will not come near you.

You will only look with your eyes and see the recompense of the wicked. The thousand falling and the 10 ,000 falling, that does lend this to a military kind of an idea.

Enemies falling in battle, not so much from the pestilence, so that's very possible. But I think verse eight does give us some range to call it a military idea here.

Because it says you will only look with your eyes and see the recompense of the wicked. Could we be going back to holy war here, the conquering of Canaan of the holy land and seeing the recompense of the wicked, which came upon those

Canaanites and those Philistines and all those other ites at the hand of the Israelites under the direction of God the

Almighty. And they looked upon them and they saw what was happening. They saw what was happening, but it didn't happen to them. They were

God's agents in all that. It reminds me of what it says in the book of Thessalonians, that God has not destined us for wrath.

One fellow fire pastor I spoke to at the last national conference had an idea we were just discussing and I had not really considered it before, that in heaven, the saints will forever be looking upon the punishment of the wicked.

It will be a signal, if you will, of God's glory, of God's wisdom, of the justice of God, of the fairness of God, in the sense of they didn't believe.

Also the unfairness of God, that the only innocent one who never deserved to suffer, Jesus Christ, did suffer for our sins, that we should be able to come to God free of sin.

And he said, he says you only look with your eyes and see the recompense of the wicked because the destruction that they are bringing, the destruction, the anger that God has at sin is for those who do not believe in the

Lord Jesus Christ. Do you know Jesus? Do you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ? If you believe in the

Lord Jesus Christ, then the recompense of you, the wicked, fell upon him, the innocent.

And you will see this with your eyes of faith now. And in some way when he returns and brings this to himself in a fuller way, which

I can't really explain, I wouldn't take the time right now. You only look with your eyes and see the recompense of the wicked.

You will see it and not experience it because if your faith is in Jesus, if you've repented of your sins and come to him in faith and beg

God for forgiveness because of what Jesus Christ did on the cross, your recompense was where?

Second Corinthians 5 .21 says he made him, Jesus, who knew no sin, to be sin for us that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

There's the gospel in one verse, is it not? That Jesus Christ took upon himself the punishment that you or I should rightly deserve.

But Christ took it. And this is what the Psalm tells us here. Looking with your eyes and seeing the recompense of the wicked, seeing the goodness of God, seeing the severity of God towards sin, seeing what you missed, what was taken off of your plate because it was put on Christ's.

I wonder, if we just take a brief pause right here, how many of us in stepping out in something for the

Lord, Conley said that next Saturday, we're going to step out for the

Lord. Now, here's a scary thing. Let me tell you something scary. We're going to go, well,

I'm gonna crawl, and stand before a murder mill, an abortion clinic, women's rights, women's health, pregnancy facilitation, whatever they want to call it, it's murder.

It's murder. Before I took vacation, and then, of course, my time in the hospital, we've had quite a break from our

Sunday School series, which is a biblical theology of race. And we've not done anything, and we're gonna do very little, as I've told you, with the current social movements regarding race.

This was chosen before all that. And yet, I made a point. The first time we had that curriculum at Sunday School, what does it mean that we're all made in the image of God?

Dignity. The dignity of life. We have to stand for the dignity of life, because all humans, be they with Christ or not with Christ, that's

God's business, are made in the image of God. And that inheres upon them a certain dignity, and we, as believers in Jesus Christ, who have that image of God restored in us, have an obligation before God to stand for that dignity.

That's why that biblical theology of race is showing that it all comes from God, and the melanin in your skin or lack thereof has no difference.

Much as Paul says, circumcision or uncircumcision means nothing, but faith in Christ is all there is.

Does it make you scared? Be honest now. To think you're gonna stand in the streets of the city of San Jose, or is it

Santa Clara, somewhere around here, the left coast, as they like to call it? What kind of a reception do you expect?

Do we expect? It won't be warm. This is a hymn of encouragement.

This is something we should almost be singing to each other as we march out the door after praying, and get in our cars and go there, to remind ourselves that he who dwells in the shelter of the

Most High, it is God the Almighty who protects us. We can say to Yahweh, who is always our refuge and our fortress and so forth, and those falling at our side, 1 ,000 on one side, 10 ,000 at the other side, all in God's hands, because you have made the

Lord your dwelling place. Do you see the progress here? This strengthening that happens as they go through this choir, this encouragement, this strengthening?

You've made the Lord your dwelling place, not like you've arrived. As Paul said, I have not arrived or attained any kind of perfection, but I stretch out for the goal of the upward call of the prize of Jesus Christ.

You've made the Lord your dwelling place, that dwelling place, that shelter, that abiding place.

And because you've done this, and now here, he intercedes, or he intervenes here.

This second part of verse nine is the second place where our psalmist speaks.

He says, the Most High, who is my refuge. Did you catch that? Elion is my refuge.

He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High, that's Elion, that's verse one, will abide in the shadow of the

Almighty. And now he says, the Most High, Elion, this one who's so far and away and unattainable and just not here.

He's there wherever there is, that one who cannot even be conceived. He says, the

Most High, who is my refuge. And the choir goes on.

No evil shall be allowed to befall you. No plague shall come near your tent. This is not a guarantee of health and prosperity and welfare or anything like that.

There is a principle here that he who dwells in the shadow of the Most High is abiding in the one place, the only place where you can know that anything and everything that happens to you or with you is in God's will, as for your good.

Very commonly known, Romans 8 .28, all things work together for good for those who love God and are called according to his purpose.

Doesn't say they work for pleasantness. Doesn't say they work for ease of life.

It says they work for your good, for your good. No evil shall be allowed to befall you.

No plague shall come near your tent. And the constraining factor here is within God's will.

And if it does come to you, it is not so much the plague or something evil, it is something possibly very, very difficult, such as the time

I spent in the hospital with those fever spasms I was having before they figured out which antibiotic they needed to get in me to get those to abate.

It's for my good. I left the hospital with the right antibiotic, with my fevers gone, and I must say, after all these years of walking with the

Lord, my faith is somewhat strengthened. I can thank the doctors and the nurses for all their help, but I praise

God that they helped me. For he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways.

On their hands they will bear you up lest you strike your foot against a stone. You will tread on the lion and the adder, the young lion and the serpent, you will trample underfoot.

Well, here's the one, the famous one that Satan used to draw Jesus off course, to send him scurrying to the wrong place in the wrong timing.

And of course, Jesus Christ answers back, says, you shall not put the Lord your God to the test.

Now, does this mean if you jumped off a pinnacle, that God would not send an angel to keep your foot from landing on the stone or breaking your leg or something like that?

Well, we can't say he absolutely wouldn't because only God knows whether he would or not. What we have here is more of a principle.

It sounds almost proverbial to me. As we walk with the Lord, as we follow his ways, as we constrain ourselves by what the scripture says, as we follow his will according to what we have here,

Pastor Brian this morning, I'm not gonna be able to lay him out for you, but he gave four ways to know

God's will. Well, is it scriptural? You get the consent of brothers and sisters in the

Lord. Help me out, what were the other two? Spirit must bear witness. Spirit must bear witness. Circumstances.

Circumstances, thank you very much. So this is not you casting yourself off any pinnacle and as you're falling down, say, whoops,

God bless this mess. This is the one who is being guarded in all your ways.

All your ways is manner of life. Your organization, your organizing principles.

This is the one who, like this abiding in the shelter, this constant of this being with him daily, studying his word, praying to him.

He will guard you in all your ways, those ways being Christ's ways.

You will tread on the lion and the adder and the young lion and the serpent. You will trample under foot.

I wouldn't try it. Again, there's a principle here. There's a principle here of trusting God, he who dwells in the shelter.

I will say my refuge and my God in whom I trust. Trust, not test.

Do you hear encouragement in these words? Do you need encouragement?

We all should say yes. I brought up your pastors who come to this pulpit. Yes, we need your encouragement.

We need to be strengthened. We need you to remind us that God is with us as we in his name and for your benefit proclaim his word to you.

But do you need encouragement? Let me tell you someone who desperately needed encouragement, someone who actually turned for encouragement, the

Lord Jesus Christ in his humanity, in his humanity. The man,

Jesus Christ, all God, all man, the two not confused, we all know that. The doctrine here is solid.

But Jesus Christ in his humanity, the pre -incarnate Christ in Isaiah chapter 49 verse two.

Do you know what he says? This Messiah who's being prophesied after comfort, comfort my people.

Tell Jerusalem she's paid double for all her sins. That's chapter 40 of Isaiah. And by the time you get to chapter 49, this

Messiah being sent to his people, being told it's too small a thing just to bring the gospel to the

Jews, you must bring it to the Gentiles as well because that would be too small to just go to one people.

That Messiah, that pre -incarnate Jesus Christ. Do you remember what he says in Isaiah chapter 49? Well, let me get myself there and I'll remind you.

Chapter 49 verse four of Isaiah. But I said, I have labored in vain. I have spent my strength for nothing and vanity.

Yet surely my right is with the Lord and my recompense with my God. This is the pre -incarnate Jesus Christ.

Hearing his pre -commissioning, if you will. This Ephesians 1 .3. He chose us in him before the foundation of the world.

This is that sort of commission. And he's looking ahead. He's seeing how many people are gonna follow him and how he's going to be treated and rejected by his own people.

He says, I've labored in vain. I've spent my strength for nothing and for vanity. This is

Jesus Christ, brethren. This isn't weak little me or small you.

This is the Lord needing encouragement, which he eventually gets as the prophecy continues.

I wanna continue this idea just a little bit more with you. One of the most beautiful passages in John's gospel for me is in John chapter six.

In John chapter six, verse 66. I think this is gonna turn out to be one of Peter's shining moments, at least in my opinion.

You may not think so, but bear with me a moment. After this, many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him.

Of course, that was the hard teaching about eating his body and drinking his blood and all of that. They no longer walked with him.

So Jesus said to the 12, do you want to go away as well? Now, how did he say that? He said, hey, you guys want to go too, get out of here.

How did he say that? All right, you want to leave, just go. No, how did he say that?

The man Jesus Christ turned and in need of encouragement, I would argue, said, do you want to go away too?

Are you going to leave me as well? Well, of course, Jesus Christ knew all things and he knew who would leave or not leave and when they would leave or not leave.

We know that. This is his humanity speaking here. And Simon Peter, in this grand shining moment, he answered him,

Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life and we have come to believe and to know that you are the

Holy One of God. So I ask you, we'll bring this to a close in a moment.

If Jesus Christ literally needed this kind of encouragement, if he turned to the disciples, as it were, if that question was more, can you give me some encouragement?

Can you strengthen me along this road? Will you stay with me? I'm going to go this way. When I turn around, will I still have 12 behind me?

I need to see them. I need to hear that when I'm dwelling in the shelter of the

Most High, I'm abiding in the shadow of the Almighty. I need to be reminded that he is my refuge and my fortress.

If that's Jesus Christ, how much more you or me? A psalm like this could be so powerful.

You have powerful words that can encourage others. You can preach the gospel in this psalm to anyone who needs that strengthening and that encouraging.

The Lord finally answers in verse 14 and places his blessing and his pleasure upon all that has preceded.

This whole choir and this interaction with the psalmist or the warrior or the adventurer, whatever he was, the

Lord answers back, "'Because he holds fast to me in love, I will deliver him. "'I will protect him because he knows my name.

"'When he calls to me, I will answer him. "'I will be with him in trouble. "'I will rescue him and honor him.

"'With long life, I will satisfy him "'and show him my salvation.'"

Has God shown you his salvation? Do you know Jesus Christ? Because if you do, it was not by your own doing.

For by grace you have been saved. And it's not of ourselves, it's not of works. It's the gift of God.

The faith is the gift of God. Something foreign to you. I'll show him my salvation.

Because he holds fast to me in love, does that mean that if you do what you're supposed to do, if you follow all the rules, if you read your

Bible, make a checklist of all the do's and the don'ts, and you do the do's and you don't do the don'ts, that God's gonna be so impressed he'll save you?

Of course not. That is not what it means at all. Holding fast to him in love is because God first loved us.

We love him because he first loved us. And because of that love, then we hold fast to him in love, loving the

Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength. "'When he calls to me,

I will answer him.'" Do you know these answers to the Lord? Have you heard them yourself?

Is this something that you can share with someone who needs that shot of encouragement, that spiritual adrenaline to get him through another day?

One more difficulty? One more dilemma to which he sees no end? You can.

You have words of power. You have words of strength. You have words of encouragement here for each other. You can remind him that God will rescue him and honor him.

For he who gave his only son, how shall he not in him also give us all things?

He did not withhold Jesus Christ. He will not withhold any good thing from you.

This is a psalm of encouragement. I believe it's a choir.

I think it's a choir singing out encouragement to this adventurer, as we are all adventurers. Each time we step out,

Lord willing on that Saturday that we step out on the sidewalk, we're adventurers. We're warriors for God.

Put it whatever name you want on it. But we need this strength. We need this encouragement for each other.

We need to together be this choir that sings it to one another so that God would receive all the glory, so that Christ would be honored, and that we would have success in his name.

And this is the choir. This is your script. These are the notes to sing to one another in Psalm 91.

Amen. Heavenly Father, thank you for the day you've given us once again for this time of worship.

I pray you continue with us, even as we continue with you, that you watch over the rest of our day, this special prayer meeting coming up, and be pleased with what you here receive.