Sunday Sermon - A Mighty Fortress Is Our God | Psalm 46 explores God as a refuge against internal, worldly, and satanic hardships, asserting moral neutrality is a myth where allegiance belongs to Christ or the devil. Drawing parallels between Martin Luther's Reformation and today's digital age, the speaker argues that just as the printing press broke the Catholic Church's Latin monopoly, the internet shatters modern media's truth control despite causing confusion. Ultimately, this shift empowers believers to find truth through direct access rather than institutional gatekeeping, urging a courageous response to cultural collapse rooted in stillness and divine sovereignty rather than fear. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, WAV2VEC2_ASR_BASE_960H, sat-12l-sm, script v26.04.01, and large-v3-turbo
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Refuge and Strength in Trouble00:05:24
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This morning we're continuing with our series through the Psalter that is preaching through the book of Psalms.
Today our text is Psalm chapter 46.
Again, our text is Psalm chapter 46.
Would you join me now?
And standing for the reading of God's word.
I'll read our text for us in its entirety.
When I finish reading the text, I'm going to say, This is the word of the Lord.
At which point, I would appreciate very much if you'd respond by saying, Thanks be to God.
One final time, our text for this morning is Psalm chapter 46.
The Bible says this God is our refuge and strength, our very present help in trouble.
Therefore, we will not fear though the earth gives way, though the mountains be moved into the heart of the sea.
Though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains tremble at its swelling, Selah.
There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy habitation of the Most High.
God is in the midst of her, she shall not be moved.
God will help her when the morning dawns.
The nations rage, the kingdoms totter.
He utters his voice, the earth melts.
The Lord of hosts is with us, the God of Jacob is our fortress, Selah.
Come and behold the works of the Lord, how he has brought desolations on the earth.
He makes wars to cease to the end of the earth.
He breaks the bow and shatters the spear.
He burns the chariots with fire.
Be still and know that I am God.
I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.
The Lord of hosts is with us.
The God of Jacob is our fortress, Selah.
This is the word of the Lord.
All right, please be seated and join me as I pray for us.
Once more, Father, we thank you for your word, and I pray that indeed through the preaching of your word today, your people would arrive at a right knowledge, a more accurate and biblical and faithful knowledge of who you are, of what you've done, and what it is that you require from us as a proper right response.
God, we pray that this knowledge would not serve as an end in itself, but rather this knowledge would serve as a necessary means propelling your people into right love.
The heart cannot love what the mind does not know.
And so, Father, we pray that through the preaching of your word and the power of your spirit, that you would fill our minds with the substance of your truth so that it might fuel our hearts with greater affection and love and worship and finally, obedience towards you.
Jesus, you said yourself that those who love you keep your commandments, that if we love you, we will obey you.
So we pray that through the preaching of your word we might know you, so that our hearts might come to love you, so that our lives, our hands, and our feet might live in obedience to your commands.
We pray all this ultimately that you might be glorified in all the earth.
But we also pray these things for the good of those people that you're saving across the globe, in our city, and even if you would be so kind in this very room, especially among our children.
We thank you for these things.
We thank you for your promises.
We thank you for your covenants.
And we thank you for your love.
We pray this in Jesus' name.
Amen.
All right, let's go ahead and dive right in.
Psalm 46, I'm breaking the text into three parts.
We'll take each part.
We're going to go with the first one, which is verses 1 through 3.
We'll begin with that.
Just to refresh your minds, the first three verses of our text are as follows God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.
Therefore, we will not fear, though the earth gives way, though the mountains be moved into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains tremble at its swelling.
Selah.
In your notes, I've written the following whether our source of hardship be from without or within.
Let me pause there for a moment.
I'm reminded of the Apostle Paul, where he writes to Timothy and he says that we have hardship without, trials, tribulation, difficulty without, and then he says, and we have fear or anxiety within.
And this is the same Apostle who writes very strongly against anxiety or worry or fear.
It is never It is never acceptable or permissible for the Christian to be afraid.
And yet, the apostle says, he says that we are terrified.
There's a sense of anxiety and fear within.
And he's not condoning that sense of fear.
If anything, he's confessing that fear as the sin that it is.
But the point is that the apostle Paul, he recognizes that in the life of the Christian, this side of heaven, there are trials without tribulation.
The Enemy Within and Without00:14:50
At times, there can even be persecution from outside, from other parties.
And yet, simultaneously, there could be difficulty.
Worry, doubt, anger, grief within.
So the Christian can be experiencing two enemies simultaneously.
And throughout church history, we know that there is actually a third enemy, namely the devil.
So within, what we have ultimately is the enemy of the flesh.
Without, what we have is the enemy of the world.
The world.
And then we also have the added enemy, this triple threat of the flesh, the world, and the devil.
The devil.
Now, when we say the world is an enemy, I know that it's become very popular in Christian circles to say, well, that creates this wrong headed dichotomy, this wrong kind of confrontation, this mentality of us versus them.
Well, the Bible uses that language.
The Bible speaks of the world in multiple different ways.
So, in one sense, the world is the cosmos, it is the physical creation, it's what God has made.
And the world is underneath the curse of sin because Adam, that is, The first Adam, our first father, he was not only the federal head of himself, of his wife Eve, and of all their posterity, all their future children, which includes you and I, but he was also the head of all creation.
That's why, when in Genesis 3, after Adam eats of the forbidden fruit, God literally curses not only Adam, but he curses the very ground.
The creation itself, the earth, falls under the curse because Adam was the federal head.
That means he was.
Representative of not only all of humanity, but all of the cosmos, all of creation.
That's why later in the New Testament, the scripture speaks of even the creation being under great groans, great groans and sighs, eagerly awaiting for the sons of God to be revealed.
So all of creation has fallen under the curse of sin.
So the word world is used to describe creation, the cosmos, which is under the weight of sin, under the curse of sin, and yet still.
The creation speaks to the glory of God.
That's what we call natural revelation.
We've seen that thus far in our series through the Psalms, meaning that even the skies, if you remember where we talked about how the skies are declaring the glory of God.
So, what does that mean?
It means just as in humanity, made in the image of God, the Imago Dei, human beings made in the image of God through sin, the image of God has been tarnished, and yet an image of God still remains, a vestige of the image of God.
Meaning that the image of God in man, the chief pinnacle of God's earthly creation, human beings, they're made in the image of God, the image of God, a vestige remains, so that we can still look.
At every human being, and say they reflect in some sense the image of God, they reflect God Himself, and yet the image of God has also been tarnished by sin not utterly destroyed, but tarnished.
So, too, it is with the rest of earthly creation outside of humanity.
That earthly creation it still maintains enough of God's character to where the Apostle Paul can write with confidence in Romans chapter 1.
He says, He says that creation itself testifies to the glory of God.
So that all men are without an apologia, an argument, an excuse.
Meaning, no single human being can claim the excuse of ignorance.
Ignorance doesn't mean innocence because ignorance is a lie.
Every single human being, by virtue, without even a single verse of the Bible ever being read to them, without ever hearing a single sermon, without ever knowing about Jesus Christ, every single human being is still responsible to honor God as holy.
Because creation itself is enough, it is a sufficient testimony not to save humanity, but it is a sufficient testimony to prove that there is a God in heaven who will judge both the living and the dead, that he has eternal power and a divine nature, and he is worthy of worship.
So, natural revelation, the heavens, the skies, the earth, the trees, the mountains, the rivers, this is sufficient to reveal to all people the existence of God, so that all men have been stripped of any excuse.
So, just as human beings were made in the image of God, yet the image of God has been tarnished through sin but not utterly lost, the vestige remains.
So, too, in the rest of creation outside of humanity, the earth itself, we still have a sufficient testimony.
The earth is still able, it is still able by God's grace to testify to God's existence.
And yet, there are certain things in natural revelation that do not speak to the character and nature of God because they have fallen under the weight and curse of sin.
So, we can look at creation and the order of creation, the certain laws that God has put into play in the universe, and we can glean from this observation something true about the character and nature of God.
And yet, at times, if natural revelation is all we look to and not special revelation, namely the Word of God, then at times we will come to wrong conclusions because natural revelation has fallen under the curse of sin.
For instance, death.
When we look to the world, to the cosmos, creation, human beings, and the rest of the creatures that God has made, Even plants that he has made, we see death.
And if we're not careful, we could glean from that, we could conclude that God is the author of death, and we would be wrong.
Because that's an element where the natural creation has fallen under the curse of sin.
That doesn't reveal the character of God, that reveals the failure of man, the failure of Adam to uphold the covenant that God established with him in the garden.
So, all that being said, the word world is used to describe the cosmos.
The word world is also used to describe the whole mass of humanity.
An example of this would be John 3 16.
For God so loved the world, the whole mass of humanity.
There is a sense in which God has compassion on all people, both the elect and even the non elect.
Why is this the case?
Because the Psalms declare that God has compassion on all he has made.
So in God's common grace, this would be apart from his fatherly love for his elect children, but in God's common grace, in his common love, God, there is a sense in which we can say God loves even the unbeliever.
Even the unbeliever that God has not chosen, that God has not determined to ever save.
There is in His common grace, there is this general compassion for all of creation, including all of humanity, even those individual people that God has determined not to save.
His fatherly, adoptive, eternal, salvific love, however, is reserved for.
For his people who are saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ alone.
So the word world means the cosmos.
The word world means the mass of humanity.
But the word world also has at least one other meaning.
The word world also conveys the evil system underneath the domain and rule of Satan who takes people captive, according to Paul's, again, his epistles, his letters to Timothy, that Satan takes people captive to do his will.
To do his bidding.
There's a verse in the Bible in one of Paul's letters to Timothy.
I can't remember if it's the first epistle or the second, but where Paul says that we should argue, we should rebuke or oppose those enemies, our opponents, with gentleness.
It says, Respond to them with gentleness.
And then he gives the reason why.
He says, For you do not know that God might grant to them repentance, causing them to come back after being taken captive by Satan to do his bidding.
Will.
So our enemy is not flesh and blood.
We see that in Ephesians, right?
Our ultimate battle is not against flesh and blood, but principalities.
But the reality is that these principalities, the enemy, the spiritual enemy, Satan and all his demons, they do, however, take people captive to do their will.
So our enemy, we have the flesh, the devil, and the world.
And the world is good insofar as it represents the cosmos, what God has created.
It's also good insofar as the world represents our universal neighbor that we're called to have compassion on because God has compassion on all he has made.
But the world also signifies the unbeliever who, although there is a sense in which we're called to love them as our neighbor, we must also recognize that everyone has an allegiance.
Neutrality is a myth.
There is no moral neutrality.
Every man is either for Christ or against him.
And those who are not believers in the Lord Jesus Christ and submitted to his lordship.
Have in fact been taken captive by someone else.
That someone else is the devil, who Jesus says in John chapter 8 is their father.
He says this to the Pharisees.
He says that your father is not Abraham, not in a true spiritual sense.
Your father is not God.
Your father is the devil, and you look just like him.
You're a chip off the old block.
He was a liar and a murderer from the beginning, and here you are lying, that is, bearing false witness about me and.
And also, you have murderous intentions in your heart to crucify me unjustly, to murder me.
So, Jesus says to the Pharisees, You guys are children of the devil.
And their father, spiritual father, the devil, had taken them captive to do his will.
So, all that being said, our hardship in this life, our trials in this life, the difficulty that we experience, it can come from within our flesh.
It can also come from without, that is, the world, that evil system.
That Satan takes people captive to do his will, and it can also come from the enemy himself the flesh, the world, and the devil.
And yet, in the midst of tribulation and trial, whether it be trial within or without, from the flesh, the world, or the devil, God is a refuge to all who seek shelter in him.
God is not merely our hope of future deliverance from every kind of trouble, but he is also our source.
Of present help.
Look back at the text, verse 1 God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.
Some of you need to hear that this morning, right?
Because I think sometimes we can over spiritualize things to the point where, well, where God only has promises for the life to come, where God is only faithful in an ultimate spiritual sense.
But our text says that not just that God is a refuge, an ultimate refuge for the life to come.
But that he is a refuge and a help that is present.
He is a present help.
So, how is it that the Lord is a present help for every kind of trouble?
Well, he presently helps his people by equipping and empowering them to bear up underneath any kind of trouble they may find.
It is for this reason that the righteous are, as the scripture says, as bold as lions.
The righteous are as bold as lions.
This is a declaration.
This is not a prescriptive text, basically a commandment.
That's what prescriptive texts are.
They're an exhortation or a commandment.
The Bible doesn't say you need to be as bold as a lion to be righteous.
That's not what the scripture says.
No, it just says the righteous are as bold as lions.
Meaning that if you are the people of God, if you are righteous because of the finished work of Jesus, that's the imputed righteousness of Christ that comes not by your works but by grace through faith, then the result of that, the evidence of that, is boldness.
That you are courageous.
You're courageous and bold in the face of trouble.
And so, one of the ways that God is not just our future help with an ultimate deliverance, but that God is our present help in times of trouble is by making us bold and courageous in the midst of trouble.
So, God will utterly and entirely and ultimately deliver us at some point.
But in the meantime, God is still doing something.
So, the Christian hope In God as refuge when it comes to times of trouble is not merely a future hope that God will completely deliver me at some point, but it's also a present hope that God is, He is going to deliver me in the future, but He is helping me in some sense now.
Does that make sense?
God will ultimately deliver me someday, but He is presently helping me today.
And one way that God is presently helping you in The midst of trouble is that he is presently helping you by being a constant and infinite supply of courage.
The righteous are as bold as lions.
And that's what we see.
I want you to get real quick, if we can pan out and get a 30,000 foot view of our text.
One of the major themes of Psalm 46 is this it is courage in the people of God during the midst of the whole earth giving way.
Right?
The earth is melting.
That's the kind of language that our text is using.
The earth gives way, it's melting.
The nations are raging, but not just raging, it also uses the term that the nations are tottering.
Right?
So if you remember Psalm chapter 2, where the nations rage, right?
That everything in them desires to sever the bonds of the lordship of Christ.
Right?
They cast off their bonds, or at least that's their desire.
God's Sovereign Control Over All00:06:57
Meaning that they want to be autonomous.
But there is no autonomy.
Just like neutrality is a myth, moral neutrality does not exist.
Every man has an allegiance either to Christ or to Satan.
In the same way that neutrality is a myth, autonomy is a myth.
No one is autonomous but God alone.
God is the only autonomously free creature.
Now, you and I, we have freedom of the will in some sense, and I don't have time to go into the theological and philosophical implications of how people are free, and yet God is also free to do whatever He pleases.
But suffice it to say, in terms of autonomous freedom, God alone is the only autonomous free being.
All creatures, so the Creator alone is autonomously free.
All creatures, we like to fancy ourselves as being autonomously free.
That we can do whatever we want, but we can't.
It's not true.
And so, too, that's why the nations rage.
They desire to sever the bonds, the bonds of heaven that are over them, the lordship and control and dominion of God over all creation.
And yet, they are fruitless in their attempts.
It's futile.
They are ultimately in submission.
Even though their will is not submitted, they are, in terms of all their abilities and everything that they can accomplish, They are submitted to the eternal decree of God.
No one can do anything that God hasn't decreed.
You know why?
I'll say this quickly.
You know why there's only one autonomously free being in all the universe?
Because if anyone else has true autonomous freedom, then it encroaches, it compromises the autonomous freedom of God.
Meaning that if you, for instance, as an individual person, had true autonomous freedom, you could do whatever you wanted, even those things that would Contradict and be outside of the sovereign decree of God, then God wouldn't be sovereign.
R.C. Sproul said it like this this was one of his famous quotes.
He said, If there is one maverick molecule in all the universe, then God is not in control.
See, people like to reassure themselves with pithy statements, but they don't actually believe them.
So people say this they'll say, Hey, you know, COVID 19 and lockdowns and Joe Biden, and oh my goodness, you know, this left wing media, and you know, everything's crazy right now, but God is on the throne.
It's like, that's true.
But do you actually believe that's true?
What do you mean by God is still on his throne?
You know, praise God, he's, you know, things are crazy right now, but he's still in control.
All right, what do you mean by that?
When you speak of God being in control, what do you mean?
Because I think what you probably mean, if you're the average evangelical in the church of America today, what you mean is that God's actually not in control.
Because what you mean is that every single person has free will.
And when you say free will, you don't mean a moral sense.
But what you mean is everyone is autonomously free and they can all do things outside of God's sovereign will, and the things that people do outside of God's will can have an effect on you, which means God is absolutely not in control.
God has zero control.
God is not sovereign or in control of anything.
You're in complete danger.
And you might counter that by saying, well, the reason why I have security and safety is because I am choosing to submit to God's control.
Oh, so God's not in control.
You mean that God has a weak, pathetic sense of control?
He can only control those who give him permission.
That's cute.
You, made of dust, worm, that's what Job, the language he uses.
So, you, worm, you, creature from the dust, you believe that God has control if you give him permission.
That's cute.
That's really cute.
That's not true.
No, God has control, period.
Think of Acts chapter 2 and Acts chapter 4.
Acts chapter 2 and Acts chapter 4, one of the sermons and one of the prayers of Peter, the apostle, Is this, he says that men gathered from all over.
The Pontius Pilate and the Jews and all these people, they gathered to do to Jesus, that is, to put him to death, to crucify him, to do to Jesus exactly what your hand and your plan predetermined to occur.
Meaning that Jesus was crucified for at least two reasons because evil people made evil choices, and Jesus was crucified because God decreed for it to happen before the foundations of the world were laid.
Jesus was crucified, the Bible says, before the earth was even created.
He was crucified in the eternal decree of God and the councils of eternity according to what God sovereignly determined to take place.
And so, what we see in terms of human agency is that people do make free choices.
Their choices are free, and that's why they're morally responsible for the choices they make.
If you're just a robot, Making choices that God's making you make, then you cannot bear moral responsibility for those choices.
People make free choices and they're responsible.
And yet, there is a sense in which the freedom of the creature, of mankind, making morally free choices that he is morally culpable for is still not outside of the sovereign decree of God.
So when we say, as Christians, Bible believing Christians, that God is in control, we mean it.
We mean it.
So, when we say God is in control, we mean, no, he is actually faithful to his word, where he says he appoints those who are in positions of authority.
And he works, the way that he brings about his will is through human agency.
So, God uses agency, but God is the one who ultimately does it.
So, who elected Joe Biden?
Right?
Just to use that as a case study.
God, according to his eternal decree, through the agency of man.
For our good, and he does things in his judgment for our wickedness.
So I believe that God sovereignly elected Joe Biden through the agency of stupid people to judge a rebellious nation.
That's what he did.
But he's sovereign, God did it, and man is also responsible, morally free.
But no one is autonomously free.
That means no creature is capable of making choices that would be outside of or contradicting the sovereign eternal decree.
God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.
Boldness Amidst a Changing World00:11:15
Therefore, we will not fear, this is verse 2.
We will not fear though the whole earth gives way, though the mountains be moved into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains tremble at its swelling.
Again, that 30,000 foot view.
The big theme, the predominant theme in Psalm 46 is this The earth is giving way, the cosmos itself are seeming to melt.
The nations are both raging, but also the nations, not just Psalm chapter 2, they're raging and trying to sever that bond of the sovereignty of God, somehow trying to act autonomously apart from his rule and reign.
But no, the nations are not just raging with rebellion and anger against the lordship of Christ, but the nations are tottering, our text goes on to say.
Meaning they're folding, they're falling to their knees.
Nations are crumbling.
Nations are crumbling.
And although nations rage, although some nations rise, and although other nations fall, they totter, they crumble, and although the earth itself, the cosmos, is melting away and giving way, during the midst of all of this, the predominant view and heart posture of the people of God should be boldness.
The righteous are as bold as lions because God is our refuge and strength.
America is not our refuge and strength.
Trump is not our refuge and strength.
Certain institutions are not our refuge and strength.
Even this physical creation, the earth, is not our refuge and strength.
None of those things are our ultimate source of hope.
So, as nations rise and other nations crumble, right?
I don't know.
I hope that America repents, and I am hopeful that that will take place.
I really am.
Because one of the beautiful things about leftist politics is it's self defeating.
I'm not hopeful because I think necessarily Christians are going to prove things wrong.
I think the strongest player on our team is the other team.
I think nobody is better at proving certain things as being foolish and wrong than leftists.
You see their policies, and people are like, oh my goodness, what have we done?
This is insane.
This is the most foolish thing I've ever encountered.
So I am very, very hopeful.
That America will repent.
That God is disciplining America as it is in a state of apostasy.
Right?
It's in the process of apostasy, turning its back on God.
And I believe that through His rod, aka leftists, and also through grace, aka Christians preaching the gospel, that America will repent and come back around.
But here's the point if it doesn't, it's okay.
I think we should fight for this nation.
It's a wonderful nation, regardless of what people say today.
I know it's popular to hate this name, but this is a wonderful nation, and it's founded on biblical principles.
That's why it's been so wonderful.
It's been a wonderful nation.
And the stains on our nation, like slavery and those kind of things, aren't features, they're bugs.
Those are all the examples of how America didn't live up to its principles.
But the beauty of America is that in its constitution, based off of biblical principles, as these things over time and decades were worked out, The nation got better.
And those things that were not consistent with the Constitution were fixed and solved.
That's the beauty.
I think it's probably, I really think that America is the greatest nation that has ever existed.
And I think the reason why is because it's the closest, it's the closest to being a nation founded on God's word, right?
Then that would just make sense, right?
Then the nation that's the closest to being founded on God's word would also be the most successful because God's word works.
God's word is faithful, it doesn't return void.
And there is a blessing, a promise of blessing for obedience.
However, so it's worth fighting for.
We pray for the repentance of our nation.
We want to preach to those who don't believe God's word.
We want to be involved in business, economics, the marketplace, politics, all these things.
It's good for a Christian to involve themselves in these things.
But if we lose, if we lose America, here's the deal Christians might lose America, but we don't lose the world.
Right?
That's the hopeful eschatology that we have.
We believe that in the same way a little bit of leaven works through the whole lump of dough, in the same way a small mustard seed eventually becomes a massive tree and its branches begin to cast shadow over all the earth, right?
It's a little bit.
Over time, becoming large, massive, significant.
That's what the kingdom of God is like.
The kingdom of God, it starts small, it grows slowly, and it eventually becomes a force to be reckoned with.
It eventually becomes significant, massive, engulfing everything.
So the kingdom of God will advance.
The church wins.
The church wins because the head of the church is Christ, and Christ is not a loser.
Christ doesn't lose.
So the church will win, but we have to understand that the church can win without America.
I would love, because I love this country, I would love for the church to win with America.
I would love for America to get it together.
And I think that America is a case that is worthy of the church involving itself in.
Do you understand?
But we don't need America to succeed for the church and ultimately Christ to succeed.
Nations come and go.
There was a time when no one thought that Rome would be defeated, people thought this would be an eternal empire that would eventually cover the whole face of the earth.
I mean, there was a time when Adolf Hitler thought he was going to rule everything.
That the Third Reich teamed up with Japan, that they were going to take over everything.
It didn't happen.
It didn't work.
Nations, empires, societies, and cultures, they rise, and our text says later on, and they totter.
They crumble.
The earth gives way, it melts.
This is what I want you to see that language of the earth giving way and melting.
In verse 3, I believe it is.
Nope, verse.
Verse 2, therefore we will not fear though the earth gives way.
The better translation of that, as I looked it up, the better translation is this though the earth change, is actually what the text means.
Therefore we will not fear, right?
The righteous are as bold as lions.
We will not give in to cowardice.
We will not fear.
We will not give in to not just the trouble without, but see, the trouble without often is what creates the trouble within, right?
Trouble without meaning the earth changing.
So it says the earth gives way, but the better translation is though the earth change.
And the reality is, I think part of the reason why the church is shrinking back in cowardice is because right now, the earth, which has always changed, nations have always risen and they've always fallen.
That's nothing new under the sun.
This has happened as long as humanity has existed.
But here's the difference I think one of the reasons why the church is shrinking back in fear is because the earth is changing today very quickly.
Very quickly.
Something that, if you look at history, may have taken 50 years for a culture to progress to a certain state of rebellion.
To start condemning certain things that are actually virtuous, according to God, as vices, and esteeming certain vices, according to the scripture, as virtues.
Usually it's a slower process, right?
The progression of sin and the degradation of a culture and society usually is slower.
But here's the deal the earth has given way, aka the earth has changed.
Nations have risen and nations have tottered for millennia.
If there's any difference at all today, the difference is this.
That the earth is changing quickly.
And I think there are practical reasons for that.
And one of the reasons is because the world is smaller today.
It's smaller in the sense that everybody knows about everything.
Now, the thing that we should aspire towards is wisdom.
But what we've done is this.
All right, so knowledge, you can have knowledge and not be wise, you can be knowledgeable and not be wise.
Wisdom is knowledge applied.
There are people who know a lot of things, but they don't know how to live.
Right, so they have knowledge, but they don't know how to apply it to their marriage, to their parenting, to the marketplace, to economics, to all these different things.
They don't know how to apply knowledge.
So, knowledge, or I'm sorry, wisdom is knowledge applied.
And we've gone from wisdom to mere knowledge in generations past.
Today, we've gone from wisdom to knowledge and then from knowledge to mere information.
We don't even have knowledge anymore.
We don't even accurately know things anymore.
We just have information.
So, we have more information than ever, and yet we're less knowledgeable than ever, and we don't have an ounce of wisdom if our life depended on it.
And a lot of this is because of things like the internet, technology, social media, all these different things.
And because of this, it's made the world smaller, it has flooded us with information, and everyone is confused.
And everyone is expected to have an opinion on everything.
Everything.
Hey, did you hear the other day this happened?
You know, what's your opinion?
What's your commentary?
And where the scripture says, be slow to speak and quick to listen.
Right?
Because that rashness, that quickness to speak, lends towards the anger of man.
And the anger of man does not bring about the holiness of God.
That's what James says.
And so today, what we have is not just that we have in our pocket sources of information about everything in the world in real time as it's happening.
That's half of the problem.
Here's the other half, and I think it's the bigger one.
That same little brick in your pocket.
Doesn't just give you access to every single piece of information all over the world, it also gives you a platform to share your opinion about it to everyone in the world.
That's the problem.
And because of that, what we have is this nothing new under the sun.
We have nations tottering.
They've tottered before, they'll totter again.
We have nations tottering.
We just have, if there's anything new at all, and I don't think it's that novel, but if there's any novelty at all, what we have is we just have nations tottering quicker.
That's all we have.
We just have the world changing.
If the world gives way, again, the better translation of that is even if the world changes, the world is always changing.
True Application Beyond Legalism00:09:52
Nations come, they go.
Rulers come, they go.
Things change, cultures change.
All this has always happened.
And all we're living through right now, in this moment, in this time, all we're living through is another change.
And if there's anything novel at all, it's simply a quicker change.
But though the earth gives way, and even if it gives way quickly, therefore we will not fear.
The commandment is not to fear.
The prescriptive text, the command in our text.
It's the first half of verse 2.
We will not fear.
However, here's the thing.
Notice the therefore, right?
Sproul used to say, whenever you see therefore, you need to know what it's there for.
So the therefore, therefore we will not fear, this actually comes as the result, the effect of verse 1, which is what?
God is our refuge.
So listen, church.
The message of our text, just in these first three verses, is not this.
The message is not work really hard to be bold.
Even in the midst of chaos, and God will reward your hard work of boldness by being to you a refuge.
That's not the verse.
That's not the text.
No, the text is because God is already your refuge, because He has promised to be your refuge, regardless of your moral grit, God, on the basis of His mercy and grace, has promised to be a refuge for all His people.
And because of His faithfulness, not yours, because of His strength, not yours, because He is a sufficient refuge, Refuge, you will not be afraid.
You will not be afraid because God is the solution.
God is the antidote to your worry, to your fear.
God is a refuge.
And He is not only the hope of future deliverance, but He is the promise of present help.
He is your refuge, a very present help in times of trouble, whether it be trouble without or trouble within.
And for that reason alone, the righteous should not fear.
And they should not fear in what circumstances?
Any of them.
And all of them.
Even if the whole earth gives way, aka, even if the whole earth changes.
Even if every nation currently existing falls, and all of a sudden we have some kind of post apocalyptic tribal world.
If all that were to happen, God is a refuge.
The righteous don't fear, even when the earth gives way.
One more piece of cultural commentary.
I just think it's helpful to preach the word in such a way that it applies to real life and every aspect of life.
I've said this often, but I don't know if I've said it in this context, so let me say it briefly.
I believe that what constitutes a faithful sermon is three parts revelation, interpretation, application.
Revelation means that the man of God, the minister, the preacher, he comes before the people of God and he does not say, I have a dream, I have a vision, I have a strategy, I have an idea.
Now he comes before the people of God and he says, I have a text.
So, the revelation is infallible because the revelation is not man's revelation but God's.
It's the word.
So, revelation, I have a text.
The second part, revelation, interpretation, application, interpretation, meaning not eisegesis, where man reads in his own thoughts and opinions into the text, but exegesis, meaning a faithful exegesis, a faithful interpretation, reading out of the text what God actually placed there, what God actually means by the text.
Not what you mean by the text, what God intends to.
For the text to mean.
So, Revelation, I have a text.
It's God's revelation, interpretation, a faithful exegesis of the text.
And if you do that, which I think a lot of Reformed churches in our nation do, if you do that, what you have so far accomplished is an audible commentary on the Lord's day, but it's not a sermon.
And there's some great audible commentators, but they're not preachers.
If I named them, you might be offended because you probably like them.
And I like them too.
I like a lot of things about them.
They're great to read.
But I wouldn't want to be a member in their church and sit under their preaching because they don't have preaching.
Text, exegesis.
Text, exegesis.
That's not preaching.
Preaching is revelation, interpretation, application.
Preaching says here's the text, here's what it means, and here's what you need to do.
And the reason we don't do application anymore is because the pendulum always overswings.
We overcompensate, right?
So we're coming from this moralistic, therapeutic deism, aka big phrase just to say, The good old boys, Baptist good old boys, who they taught their children what was right.
But you know why their children left it and forsook that kind of doctrine, that kind of teaching?
Because they taught them the what, but they didn't teach them the why.
When you hang the what in midair without putting it on the hook, the foundation of why, people rebel.
People rebel.
That's why people are rebelling right now with mass.
They're like, why?
Not once has Fauci given a singular good scientific argument.
For wearing a mask.
So we're not going to do it.
Right?
That's not even rebellion.
That's actually a gift.
It's called logic.
God has given people logic.
So when you teach them what, but you don't teach them why, what you get is rebellion.
People, they push it off.
Right?
So my point is we had a generation that taught the what.
It taught the what, but without the why.
And it was all about good behavior, moralistic, therapeutic deism.
Do the right thing.
Be a good old boy.
And then what happened is because the what was there, what?
Be good.
Why?
Was absent.
Because of that, we had this overreaction and overcompensation.
The pendulum swung too far.
And then what do we hear nowadays?
Don't be a legalist.
Don't be a legalist.
Hey, that's legal.
This sounds a little legalistic.
The Pharisees, Jesus, you know, Jesus was just sugar and spice and everything nice to everyone except for the Pharisees.
And that's all you hear.
And so then what happens?
There's no law.
Gospel, gospel, gospel, but no law.
And then in preaching, what happens?
Even in the Reformed Church, people, out of the fear of man, they bow the knee, pastors bow the knee to this garbage, this false accusation of legalism.
And so then what they do is they stop preaching and start offering audible commentaries.
Revelation, interpretation, but no application.
Why do they not give application?
Because application tells the people of God to do something.
And if you tell the people of God to do something, you might get accused of being a legalist.
You're telling people what to do.
No, what's legalistic is when you say, do this.
To be saved.
That's legalism.
But when you say you're saved by grace alone, through faith alone, and Christ alone, and because of that gift of God's salvific love for you, you should love Him in return.
And if you love Him in return, Jesus said that the evidence of your love for Him will be doing this.
So do it.
Not to be saved, but because you were saved.
That's not legalism.
That's just application.
And if you don't have application in your preaching, then you just have revelation and interpretation, aka it's not a sermon.
It's a commentary.
And so, yes, I like to apply scripture to culture and to life and to politics and economics and all these different things.
We have a generation of pastors that, if they ever apply God's word to anything, it's the home and the church.
Every conference you'll ever hear is a marriage conference or a parenting conference.
That's it.
Right?
Because it's the only thing they feel like they have enough confidence that God's word speaks to the arena of the family.
With, you know, explicitly enough to where I can say this and have enough clear scripture to back me up to where I can somehow get out of the legalist accusations that I know I'm going to receive.
So then that's what you have.
You have promise keepers, you have all these different things focused on the family, and they're good things, but then what you hear in the same breath is hey, preach a sermon about family, do a conference about family, that's good, and tell us how the church should be structured, because certainly that's part of preaching, is preaching to the church.
But leave politics out of the pulpit.
Don't talk about the marketplace.
Don't talk about media.
Don't talk about politics.
And then you wonder why Christians are losing.
Christians are losing because we forfeited.
It's not because we actually got beat.
We didn't get beat.
Christ is our head, he can't lose.
Christians didn't get beat, the match never even happened.
Christians threw in the towel because they were afraid of being called legalistic.
And so they surrendered entire breaths of human society to the enemy.
And the enemy, again, being those who've been taken captive by the true enemy, not flesh and blood, but Satan, to do his will.
Christians forfeited these things because they were afraid that if they preached on these things, they would be accused of being legalistic.
They'd be accused of being theocratic, theonomic, any of these things.
When the reality is, it's just Christian.
It's just Christian.
Why Christians Forfeit the Fight00:09:28
The Bible applies to all of life.
It's sufficient, the Bible says this, sufficient for life and godliness.
Yeah, Joseph says the Bible doesn't apply to everything, just life and godliness.
Life is a big category, it's a really big category.
Some might say it's all encompassing, it encompasses all of life.
So, all that being said, here's my little cultural commentary.
Remember Luther?
Martin Luther, one of the things he wanted to do was not just rediscover the gospel because it had been buried in all the gunk of Roman Catholicism.
It's not just that he wanted to remove the gunk that was surrounding the diamond and to reveal once more the gospel of Jesus Christ.
But in doing that, he wanted to recover Orthodox gospel doctrine, but he also wanted a long term solution because he knew that if it was just him getting right doctrine and preaching it to as many people as would hear him, that would only solve the problem for a few people and for a temporary period of time.
He knew that if he was really going to solve the problem, that the solution would live on beyond himself, what would he have to do?
He would have to make sure that the Bible was translated into the vulgar tongue.
Vulgar meaning that's in the Westminster and the 1689 confession.
It just means the common day tongue.
The Bible would have to be translated.
At that time, it was only in Latin, it was called the Vulgate.
And in the Vulgate, they had misinterpreted text, like do penance, when the Bible would say, and repentance.
That's a pretty big variant right there.
The difference between penance and repentance.
So, the Vulgate, it was inaccurate.
And not only was it inaccurate, but it was in Latin, which nobody could read or even understand.
And so, people were going to these Roman Catholic masses.
And for them, you know where we get the phrase hocus pocus?
This is interesting.
Hocus pocus actually comes from, it's a rendering of the phrase in Latin that the Roman Catholic priest would say when he would change the bread.
Into the body of Christ, transubstantiation, change the bread into the literal body of Christ and the wine into the literal blood of Christ.
The people, they didn't know Latin.
They didn't know anything that was happening in the entire church service.
They're sitting there, and all they're really getting out of it is they're seeing robes and tassels and hand motions and priests doing this and that and statues and all these different things.
That's why Catholicism is all about what you see.
That's one of the things the reformers did they said, hey, let's take the Lord's Supper, as important as it is, the table, let's move that.
That doesn't need to be central.
It's a big one.
But you know what needs to be central?
The table's on the side, the pulpit's in the middle.
It's the word, the word.
Because faith doesn't come by what we see, but it comes by what we hear.
And hearing by the word of God.
And people can't hear if we don't even speak their language.
And so Luther and Tyndale, guys gave their lives, were burned at the stake as martyrs to get the Bible into the hands of the people.
Now, something happened in the technology world simultaneously.
So there's this resurgence, a reformation of doctrine.
And a mission, but at the same time, in the practical world, in the culture, the printing press.
And in the providence of God who decrees all things, he made sure that these things happen simultaneously.
And today, we have, I believe, for the first time in 500 years, something comparable to the printing press, namely the internet and social media.
Now, this is what Luther said, because the Council of Trent and all the guys at Rome and the Pope, they hated Luther.
They called him a wild boar that was going through the Lord's vineyard and ripping everything up, ruining the harvest.
And their argument, in a nutshell, was this to Luther.
They said if you take the Vulgate, the Word of God, and you rip it out of the Latin, which was a dead language that nobody knew, and you translate it into the Vulgar tongue, and then take the Gutenberg printing press and print out copies to where every family in the world has a copy of the Word of God in their home in a language that they can read, if you do that, you will open up a floodgate of iniquity.
Remember that?
That's the phrase.
A floodgate of iniquity.
And Luther, paraphrasing here, he said, I know.
He didn't argue.
He said, I know.
So be it.
So be it.
Today, we have the very same thing.
So, that principle, keep that principle in mind.
The Word of God is in Latin.
Nobody knows it except for the priest.
And they've mistranslated the Word of God.
And they are deceiving people into selling everything they have to give indulgences, to spring great grandma out of purgatory.
You got tinsel.
Going around, horrible priest, and he's preaching and saying, Can't you hear the clawing and the screaming of your loved ones in purgatory?
And if you would just give a little bit more money, you could set them free, you selfish people.
Right?
When you wonder, like, how the Catholic Church has so much money, there's a reason.
When you lie to everyone and rip off the entire world, and that's how you got your money, like what people like to say about white people, the Catholic Church, they did it.
They did it.
That's not a rumor.
That's not critical race theory.
It's just bona fide truth.
That's why they have money.
When you lie to everyone and rip them off, then 500 years of investing and money accumulated, boom, you're rich.
That being said, that being said, Tinsel going around preaching about purgatory and giving indulgences, do penance, they had the Bible mistranslated and in Latin.
And basically, what Luther was saying is let go of your monopoly on what?
Revelation, on truth.
Well, in our time, what do we have now?
We have had, up until very recently, we have had in culture now, we have had a monopoly by the institutionalized media.
And through the age of the internet and social media platforms, what we have now is this we have a floodgate of iniquity.
See, the same thing that happened 500 years ago with Luther and Rome, the Roman Catholic Church, they had a monopoly on the revelation, in this case, the revelation being the Word of God.
They had a monopoly.
They're the only ones who knew the truth, and they were able to twist it to serve their purposes and oppress the people.
And then Luther said, I'm going to get it into the common tongue.
Now, here's what happened.
All of a sudden, truth became possible.
People could actually know what's true.
And there's pros and cons.
The con was 3,000 different denominations, and a lot of them are lousy.
And what Luther said was absolutely right.
What did he say?
Worth it.
Worth it because better to have a floodgate of iniquity, right?
A million different interpretations, a million different denominations, a million different opinions.
Because a million different people have the Bible in their home, have access direct access to the revelation to the source.
Better to have a million different things, and for many of them, if not the vast majority of them, to be wrong, but for the truth to actually be possible to find.
It may feel like a needle in a haystack, but before in Rome, there was no needle at all.
So it was one bushel of hay, no needle.
Now it's a haystack, a mile wide, but there is some needles in there.
And it's going to take work, and you're going to have to dig, and you're going to have to research, but you can find the truth.
You can see God's Word and come to an accurate interpretation of what God actually says.
The same thing 500 years, half a millennia later.
And I don't think it's a coincidence in the sovereignty and providence of God.
The same principle has happened again.
Instead of Rome, it's the left wing institutionalized media.
Instead of the Bible, God's Word, It's information, news, what's happening in the world.
And instead of the Gutenberg press, it's the internet and social media.
Instead of a million different denominations, it's now the Daily Wire and the Blaze and everything else.
Do you see?
It's the same principle.
And so right now there's a lot of confusion, a lot of division, and a lot of polarization because there's so many different sources of information.
But what I want to say is that's an improvement.
Better for there to be a million different sources of information and most of them false.
But for the truth to actually be possible to find, than what we had in our nation just a few years prior, which was the gatekeepers of institutionalized media that never told the truth.
So, no truth, one source, the truth, but a million sources, and you're going to have to sift.
That's an improvement.
But just like 500 years ago with the launch of the Reformation, I think we're seeing a lot of that occur again.
Signs of an Anxious People00:07:20
And one of the fallouts, one of the cons, the symptoms of that is mass division.
It's the earth seemingly giving way.
Old institutions, old gatekeepers, tottering, crumbling.
And they don't want to let go of their power easily.
They're not coming down without a fight.
So they're yelling, You're a racist!
Right?
Because that's the counter argument when you don't actually have substance.
You're a racist!
All these kinds of things, that's what you're hearing right now you're hearing the tottering of cultures.
You're hearing the final words of an angry man on his deathbed.
And he knows it.
What you're seeing right now is the earth giving way, changing.
And the people of God in times like these are to be courageous.
I'm going to skip to the very end because I've gone too long.
What should we look like?
What does courage look like?
It's speaking out.
It's getting involved.
It's all these things.
But in our text, the main thing that courage looks like is this Be still and know that I am God.
I will be exalted among the nations.
I will be exalted in the earth.
The Lord of hosts is with us.
The God of Jacob is our fortress.
What does courage look like for the church in this hour?
What does courage look like for the people of God, the righteous who are called to be?
As bold as lions, it looks like a prophetic crying out.
That's true, we've got scriptures that speak to that.
But our text today tells us that another element, another characteristic of the righteous courage in the midst of the whole earth giving way is stillness.
Be still and know that I am God.
One of the signs of fear, if we were to make the argument.
From the opposite direction, one of the signs of fear is tottering, shaking, reeling, clawing, grasping.
It's a frantic position, right?
Isn't that what you tell someone on a plane if there's a lot of turbulence, and all of a sudden the mass, oxygen mass, they pop down, and someone's like freaking out.
What do they look like?
If someone's freaking out, do they look like this?
No.
What does it look like when someone's having a panic attack?
They're hyperventilating, they're moving.
They're moving crazy, crazy, crazy.
You know about that, Jack.
They're moving crazy, right?
They can't stay still.
And so, conversely, what does it look like to be courageous?
A stillness.
Our world is frantic right now because they're afraid.
You think they're angry, their anger is actually the symptom of the deeper thing, which is they're afraid.
They know that the world is changing.
They know that there are musical chairs happening right now, institutions crumbling, other new ones rising.
They know they're on the ropes.
They know they're losing.
They know they're in trouble.
They know, as Romans 1 says, all men without an excuse.
They all know.
They can't claim ignorance.
That's a lie.
They know that there is a God in heaven who judges the quick and the dead and that he will do what is right in all the earth.
They know that the piper is coming.
They know that they're being found out.
They know that they ultimately are not a refuge, a strong tower, a fortress.
They're not that secure.
They're not that strong.
They know that, like the flowers of the field and like the grass, they will fade and wither.
And so, what looks like strength, what looks like anger, what looks like all this commotion is really just the signs of a panic attack.
It's the signs of an anxious people who have not put their hope in God.
Who is a refuge for the righteous?
And so, by way of contrast, we should not look like them.
Let's be bold.
Let's speak out.
Let's engage, but not in a frantic, reeling, and grasping way.
I'm not saying that we should be silent, that we should be uninvolved.
The church must speak in this hour.
The church has a prophetic responsibility and function to cry out.
But in our crying out, let's not cry out from a place of anxiety.
See, there are some pastors who have just folded to the fear of man.
There are other pastors who are crying out, but their motive in crying out is fueled.
Their voice, their loud voice, you can tell it's fueled by fear.
They're afraid.
They're desperately saying, No, this isn't right.
That's false.
This is true.
But you can tell it's this tottering, anxious, unsteady foundation.
So we can't bow the knees to the fear of man.
We can't be apathetic and do nothing.
We can't say, Peace, peace, when there is no peace.
Like a false prophet, and we can't cry out even the truth but from a place of anxiety and fear.
The only option for the church is to speak with a calm, resolved, even keel assurance that God is our refuge and that He is our present help, especially when the earth gives way.
Let's pray.
Father God, thank you for your word, thank you for its truth.
Thank you that it's always relevant.
It's always applicable.
Lord, I pray that we would take your word from here and that even further we would apply it to our hearts and to our lives.
That we would believe your word and that we would live your word in every aspect of life.
That the Lordship of Christ would reign supreme over everything.
That there would not be one arena in our hearts or in our lives that we keep to ourselves, that we think that you have nothing to say about.
Banish that thought from our heads.
That's a demonic thought.
It's a demonic doctrine that so much of the church has bought into, but it's a lie.
There's not one square inch in this world that Jesus Christ, that you do not cry out, mine.
You want it all because you purchased it all.
It rightfully belongs to you.
And even the nations themselves, even those who are raging and tottering, they are your inheritance.
We love you.
And we trust you.
It's in Jesus' name that we pray.
Amen.
Your Inheritance Is the Nations00:01:00
Oh, hi.
I didn't see you there.
Thanks for sticking around.
I've got an important announcement to make.
That's the Theonomy and Postmillennialism Conference 2023, May 5th, 6th, and 7th, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.
Theonomy and Postmillennialism.
We've got the speakers that we've already had lined up.
That's Dr. James White, Dr. Joseph Boot, Dr. Gary DeMar, non doctor Pastor Joel Webbin.
But we also have a bonus speaker, and that is Dale Partridge.
From Real Christianity.
Perhaps you've heard of him.
If not, you should start listening to his podcast.
It's fantastic.
Dale Partridge is going to be joining our team.
We're going to have live panels on Friday night and Saturday night where you'll be able to write in questions and get them answered.
We're also going to have a catered barbecue, Texas style barbecue meal on Friday that's a part of your registration fee.
All that is covered.
So you need to get that.
This is how you do it go and register right now at RightResponseConference.com.