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Rev Graham Harrison           Sunday September 16th 2001 p.m.

Psalm 46

All of us have been deeply moved by the terrible events that have taken place in America during the last week. Our eyes have been glued to our television sets as we watched those amazing scenes, terrifying scenes, and again and again witnessed the collapse of those twin towers in New York. We have shared, as far as we are able to ó none of us having any personal involvement with anybody directly involved ó in the sense of concern and anxiety. Are any still alive? Will anybody else be rescued? What will be the consequences? We read in our papers what the various pundits say about what is likely to happen economically and politically, and who knows which of them might be right! It has been an event the like of which none of us has ever experienced before. Even last evening I happened to get an e-mail from a friend in Singapore who had put an attachment to it. I opened it and it was about fourteen coloured photographs. I do not know where he had obtained them, but they were excellent photographs, if one can speak in terms like that, of the disaster scene ó people fleeing from the disaster, the actual collapse, the plane flying into the towers. So even as I was preparing this sermon it was a reminder, to me, of those tragic events in America.

Here is a psalm in which the Psalmist speaks of cataclysmic events in his experience. We do not actually know who wrote the psalm. It is not identified as a Psalm of David, but many of the commentators when they tried to fix a particular historical occasion that would have given rise to the psalm go to various episodes in the life and the experience of King David, or maybe to some of the other great kings of Israel, who knew what it was to stare death in the face and to feel that their kingdom was about to be cast down. It speaks of how in a signal way God intervened and delivered them. It is a psalm of great confidence in God. Martin Luther always said that this was his favourite psalm. Let me quote him: Come, let us sing the forty sixth psalm and let them do their worst. We sing this psalm to the praise of God because God is with us and powerfully and miraculously preserves and defends His church and His word against all fanatical spirits, against the gates of hell, against the implacable hatred of the devil and against all the assaults of the world, the flesh and sin.í Thus spoke a man who knew a life of great peril, a life that at many times was threatened with death and the great opposition of Satan. The greatest hymn that he wrote ó ëthe battle hymn of the Reformationí as it is sometimes called ó is really written on the basis of this psalm:

A safe stronghold our God is still,
A trusty shield and weapon:
So here is a Psalm that the people of God have often turned to at a time of great anxiety and distress. Like so many of the Psalms it is highly poetic. One of the troubles with people today when they come to the Word of God is that they are unable to cope with this. You read some of their hymns and there is not a shred of poetry in them. You read the way in which some of them translate the Scriptures and it is as if they have evacuated great literature of all poetic force. Often it is so with the translations of this Psalm, but read it as it is here in the Authorised Version and from beginning to end and you must agree that it is great poetry: ëëGod is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore will not we fear, though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea; Though the waters thereof roar and be troubled, though the mountains shake with the swelling thereofí [Ps. 46:1-3]. In poetic terms it is as if the Psalmist is trying to describe the greatest tragedies and calamities that human beings can ever experience. He is thinking of it not just on the national, or even on the international scale. He depicts great upheavals, even cosmic and physical upheavals.

He then moves on to speak a word of peace: ëThere is a river, the streams whereof shall make glad the city of God, the holy place of the tabernacles of the most High. God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved: God shall help her, and that right earlyí [Ps. 46:4,5] What he is doing is to say that in the midst of all these terrible troubles, these disturbances that he has to use such exaggerated language in order adequately to begin to describeó in the midst of it all the people of God know something of peace. God is in the midst of His people, Godís city shall ënot be moved. God will help her and that right early.í

Then he writes a verse that in some ways is strangely prophetic of what happened last week: ëThe heathen ragedí [Ps. 46:6] and that is what you saw happening in New York and Washington ó the raging of the heathen. They were heathen, they were not the people of God, they were not people who believed in the one true and the living God. They were animated and motivated by a false religion. ëThe heathen raged, the kingdoms were movedí. Again if you listen to the various political and economic commentators, they do not know what is going to happen. What is going to happen in the financial world? It might actually affect many of us here, those who perhaps who are dependent on pensions may find that they will diminish because of what happened in New York. Politically who knows what is going to happen? There is great agitation in the world, What should America do? Should we back America if they do it? You listen to the various politicians and one is saying one thing and one is saying another, but all agree that in this there is the potential for great trouble in the world. It can be traced it back to what happened when those two aeroplanes flew into those twin towers in New York, another one flew into the Pentagon in Washington and another one, for whatever reason, was not able to carry out its dastardly intent but crashed somewhere in Pennsylvania.

ëThe heathen raged, the kingdoms were moved.í Then it is as if the Psalmist puts it all in perspective: ëHe uttered his voice,í He spoke and ëthe earth melted. The LORD of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refugeí (v.6). Then he paints one of the most majestic pictures to be found in the Scriptures of the absolute sovereignty and majesty of God: ëCome, behold the works of the LORD, what desolations he hath made in the earth. He maketh wars to cease unto the end of the earth; he breaketh the bow, and cutteth the spear in sunder; he burneth the chariot in the fireí (v.8,9). Then he begins to drive home the lesson to us: ëBe still, and know that I am God: I will be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in the earthí(v.10). There follows the concluding refrain that really is a repetition of what he has already said in verse seven: ëThe LORD of hosts (the Lord Sabaoth) is with us; the God of Jacob is our refugeí (v.11).

There must be countless thousands, not to say millions, of Christians who down through the centuries have turned to this Psalm. They have not experienced the sort of disaster that has taken place in America during the last week but in their own little worlds they have had calamities. There has been trouble that has suddenly come upon them unexpectedly and they are not able to cope with it. They fear for something even greater and more troublesome to come. Then they come to this Psalm and there is a word of peace that is spoken to them through it! Several of the hymns that we have been singing tonight have that theme peace at their heart. One of the loveliest is the one that we sang just before the sermon, Edward Bickerstethís hymn, which is a series of questions. And really it is only the Christian who is able not only to ask the questions but answer them:
Peace, perfect peace, in this dark world of sin?
You listen to the leaders of the world and they are anxious. They are on tenterhooks; they want to be sure that President Bush does the right thing, or at least does not do what they reckon will be the wrong thing. There is great anxiety.
Peace, perfect peace, in this dark world of sin?
The answer:
The blood of Jesus whispers peace within.

Peace, perfect peace, by thronging duties pressed?
Perhaps many of you know something of that! You do not know where to turn, what to do first. There are so many pressures that are upon you
To do the will of Jesus this is rest.
Then Bickersteth refers to something that many of us will find echoed in our own experience:
Peace, perfect peace, with sorrows surging round?
On Jesusís bosom nought but calm is found.

Peace, perfect peace, with loved ones far away?
In Jesusís keeping we are safe and they.

Peace, perfect peace, our future all unknown?
Jesus we know and He is on the throne.
You see it is the idea of the sovereign God. Things have not got out of control as far as He is concerned. He still reigns even in the affairs of men.

Peace, perfect peace, death shadowing us and ours?
How would you have been if you were one of those whose relatives were working in those towers and you were anxiously awaiting news. Are they alive? Are they dead? Were they amongst those who somehow or another managed to make their escape?
Peace, perfect peace, death shadowing us and ours?
Jesus has vanquished death and all its powers.

And then the conclusion:
It is enough: earthís troubles soon shall cease,
And Jesus calls us to heavenís perfect peace.

It is a beautiful hymn, is it not? One that touches us, you might say, at our point of need; one that comes and can so often speak to us when we are up against it and when the Devil would disturb us and fill us with the sort of agitation that so often characterises people when they are in trouble and distress. Thank God there is such a thing as the peace of God, and well does the New Testament describe it as: ëthe peace of God, which passeth all understandingí [Philippians 4:7].

ëThere is a river, the streams whereof shall make glad the city of God, the holy place of the tabernacles of the most High. God is in the midst of herí [Psalm 46:4,5] Have you ever heard the last words that John Wesley spoke on his deathbed? ëThis is the bestí, he said, ëGod is with us!í and then he died. What a way to die. ëThis is the best ó God is with us!í ëGod is in the midst of her Ö The LORD of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refugeí (v.5,7). That is why so often you see people turn to the Psalms; there are depths in them that seem to reach down into the abyss of our need and we find that in all our trouble, in our distress, in our anxiety, in our perplexity, there is a word from God. Here is somebody who understands; here is a Psalmist who has been there before us and has been perhaps in an even more distressing situation than ever we are in. He speaks words that are not theoretical, words that he has proved to be true in his own experience ó and this is one of the greatest of all those words. It directs our attention, does it not, to the God who is sovereign. Not the God who is weak, not the God who is anxiously observing what is going on in the world and wondering if there is possibly anything that He might be able to do to make things a little better. God sits on the circle of eternity and He looks down at the likes of us ó little ëgrasshoppersí, the Scripture at one place calls us. That is what we are, over and against God. The Lord God Almighty, ëthe LORD of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refugeí (v.11).

 Is not the way in which the Psalmist uses that phrase, ëthe God of Jacob is our refugeí, remarkable. Why the God of Jacob? Why not the God of Abraham, or the God of Isaac, that would be equally true! But, in many ways there was something particularly pathetic about Jacob. He was not the loveliest of the patriarchs; he was so much like you and me ó very often untrustworthy, always out for his own advantage, not too careful even of deceiving those who should have been very near and dear to him. It was ënumber oneí who mattered supremely with Jacob. You might be tempted to think that he would be the sort of person that God would have just tossed onto the scrap heap ó but no, He is the God of Jacob ó and ëthe God of Jacobí says the Psalmist, ëis our refuge.í We can come to Him, He is our refuge, He is our strength, He is a very present help in trouble. You may often have had this experience ó you have turned to somebody, when you have been in trouble and distress, looking for help from them. You have done it because, when things were not like that with you, they assured you that if you called upon them at any time they would be there to help you! And you have done that but when you have come to them, for some reason or another they are either unwilling or unable to help. Thank God, He is not like that! He is a very present help in trouble. Whatever your distress might be, whether it is one of those things that Bickersteth speaks of in the course of that hymn, whether it is the sort of calamity that took place in America, God is a very present help in trouble.

I wish I could say that if something like that had happened in this country, there would be the same sort of response as apparently is taking place in America. Would we have called a Day of Prayer? Would our churches and chapels, as they flung their doors open, have been crowded to capacity with people calling upon God ó at least doing it theoretically? Or have we got beyond that as a nation? Are we just there in our arrogance against God; we do not need the likes of  Him! That, more probably, is what is true of us as a nation now. Thank God, it still has not come to that in the United States of America. But here is the picture that is given to us of the sovereign God, the God of Jacob, the Lord of hosts, the One who is a refuge and strength and is able to take away fear and give peace instead.

But, as I watched, as many of you did, those almost endless repetitions of the tragedy that was enacted as those hijacked aeroplanes crashed into those twin towers, I tried to think of the people who were inside them. Only a couple of weeks before this event happened two of the young men from our congregation who were on holiday in America, stood on the top of those towers, surveying the scene round about them. Then I thought of the thousands who must have died in the collapse of those towers. Many of them were at ease. There was the impact of the first plane into the first tower ó you have probably seen this on your television as well ó and people in the other tower were fascinated, if frightened, spectators. Some even phoned home and told their relatives not to worry, ëWe have not been hit!í Little did they know that in just a few minutes what had happened next door was going to happen to them. I suppose that they were thinking ó and you would understand that this would a perfectly rational reaction, would you not ó ëIt cannot possibly happen again!í Who would have thought that it would have happened even once ó an aeroplane flying into a tower? ëNever will it happen again!í But it did! They foolishly say that lightning never strikes twice in the same place. It certainly did in New York on Tuesday morning.

Then there was the equally tragic story of those people, particularly in the second tower, who began to escape. They panicked when they realised what had happened; then announcement came that there was no need to panic. ëAll is well. Go back to your desks!í Some of them did just that, with a false sense of security for which they paid with their lives. Then there was that terrible collapse! It made me turn to some of the portions of Scripture that come into the apocalyptic category. Indeed was it the Daily Mail that had as its banner headline the next day, Apocalypse? Apocalypse is the Greek word for the last book of the Bible, the book of Revelation. People often use that word in order to represent some ultimate calamity or great catastrophe, Apocalypse! That, in one sense, is what it was and my mind went to those passages of Scripture. I never thought that I would see something paralleling Revelation 6 in a minor way being depicted on my television screen ó but I did.

ëAnd the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind. And the heaven departed as a scroll when it is rolled together; and every mountain and island were moved out of their places. And the kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every bondman, and every free man, hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains; And said to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb: For the great day of his wrath is come; and who shall be able to stand?í [Revelation 6:13-17].
Did you see some of those television shots of all the debris hurling down and people running for their lives, fleeing from it, hopefully to safety? But for many of them they never made it! You might say that it is but a feeble representation of what it will be like at the end of the world. Something indeed apocalyptic!

Well then my mind went to something that the Lord Jesus Christ had said and no doubt He was ridiculed for having said it:

ëAnd as it was in the days of Noe, so shall it be also in the days of the Son of man. They did eat, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, and the flood came, and destroyed them all. Likewise also as it was in the days of Lot; they did eat, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they builded; But the same day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven, and destroyed them all. Even thus shall it be in the day when the Son of man is revealed. In that day, he which shall be upon the housetop, and his stuff in the house, let him not come down to take it away: and he that is in the field, let him likewise not return back. Remember Lotís wife. Whosoever shall seek to save his life shall lose it; and whosoever shall lose his life shall preserve ití [Luke 17:26-33].
I wonder how many of those people went back and they are not here to tell the tale now! The Lord Jesus Christ said there is going to be that great, that terrible Day, when He returns and then it will be too late to do anything about the state and the welfare of your soul.

The other passage that came very forcefully and powerfully to my mind were the familiar words at the end of Hebrews 12, where the apostle has been exhorting us to look to and to listen to the Lord Jesus Christ, the One whose blood speaks:

ëbetter things than that of Abel. See that ye refuse not him that speaketh. For if they escaped not who refused him that spake on earth, much more shall not we escape, if we turn away from him that speaketh from heaven: Whose voice then shook the earth: but now he hath promised, saying, Yet once more I shake not the earth only, but also heaven. And this word, Yet once more, signifieth the removing of those things that are shaken, as of things that are made, that those things which cannot be shaken may remain. Wherefore we receiving a kingdom which cannot be moved, let us have grace, whereby we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear: For our God is a consuming fireí [Hebrews 12:24-29].
You see, what happened on Tuesday was somebody that nobody, humanly speaking, would have predicted as being possible. Even the people who planned and perpetrated it, I doubt very much if they really were sure that it was going to work. But it did! But there is something more definite and that is what the Word of God warns us of. The twin towers were impregnable. The engineers said that they had been designed in such a way that, even if a jet airliner flew into one of those towers it would withstand the impact ó but it did not! It was impregnable ó but it was not! It was the very centre of the worldís wealth and commerce ó and all gone, in just over one hour. The passage that I read to you from Revelation 6, is a remarkable passage in many ways. One of its most remarkable features is the way in which it lists all types and conditions of men and links them together: ëthe kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and the chief captains, and the mighty mení ó then the other end of the scale ó the bondman (the slaves) and the free man they are all seeking to hide from the wrath of the Lamb. In those twin towers on Tuesday there were probably more multi-millionaires to the square inch than you would find anywhere else on the face of the earth. But there were ordinary lift attendants, ladies who probably served coffee in the various restaurants that would have been there; women looking after little children and babies in the day-care centres. The whole spectrum of human existence ó and they are all dead!

You might say those things are a parable of the end of the world. Does it not say something to you and me? Does it not make us ask the question, ëHow will it be with me on that Day? Whenever it comes, if it is my death first, or the return of the Lord Jesu s Christ, how will it be with me? Am I ready? ëNow is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvationí [2 Corinthians 6:2]. It will be too late then, just as it was too late for those thousands of people, undoubtedly fleeing down the staircases and the escalators when the whole place collapsed. Do not think that there is anywhere safe, there is not! The Pentagon, you might say the heart of the defence structure of the greatest military power that the world has ever known ó and a plane is crashed into it and hundreds and hundreds of people are casualties as the result. No, there is no escaping the judgment of God. The only way is to come to the Lord Jesus Christ and be found in Him.

I am sure that we have all seen those sights on our televisions. Undoubtedly we have discussed them with people. It has been the one talking point that you are not able to get away from in the course of this last week ó and I daresay it will continue like that for days to come. What do you think, spiritually? What about you, when your time comes? Will you be ready? It may not be a cataclysmic end to your life, as it was for many of those lives that were so suddenly ended on Tuesday. It might be a quiet departure from this world on a sickbed, or a sudden stroke that takes you away from life into death. The exact dramatic nature of it or not makes no difference. It will come ó will you be ready? Do you have the confidence of the Psalmist? Are you able to say: ëGod is my refuge and my strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore will not I fear, though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea; Though the waters thereof roar and be troubled, though the mountains shake with the swelling thereof. There is a river, the streams whereof shall make glad the city of God, the holy place of the tabernacles of the most High. God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved: God shall help her, and that right early. The heathen raged, the kingdoms were moved: he uttered his voice, the earth melted. The LORD of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge.í

Will your last words be anything resembling those of John Wesley? ëThis is the best of all. The Lord is with us.í If you come to Jesus Christ, you will be able to say that, truthfully!
Amen
 


 
 
 
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