The Bible Study Hour

Guest (Male): God is the eternal one, and he is never shaken. Today on the Bible Study Hour, we'll take a closer look at what may be a familiar psalm, Psalm 46. As Christians, we often hear that God is our refuge and our strength, but what do those words really mean? We can say that we trust God at all times and in all circumstances, but what does that look like when the hard times come?

Welcome to the Bible Study Hour, a radio and internet broadcast with Dr. James Boice, preparing you to think and act biblically. We know that nothing on this earth is permanent. The world as we know it will one day pass away. So where should we put our trust? What hope do we have? If you have your Bible, turn now to Psalm 46.

Dr. James Boice: Almost anyone who knows anything about Martin Luther associates him with the book of Romans, especially with Romans 1:17, "The just shall live by faith." That is the theme verse of the Reformation, and Luther was, according to the stories about his life, converted by that verse, at least by the doctrines that it contains.

What we sometimes forget when we think about Martin Luther is that he was also a great student of the Psalms. He was converted in part by his study of this great Old Testament book. He loved the Psalms throughout his life. He taught them throughout his life, and his favorite psalm was Psalm 46.

It's said of Luther that sometimes during the dark and dangerous period of the Reformation, he would get discouraged and depressed by all of the danger and all of the difficulties that were confronting him and the others. When that happened, he would turn to his friend Philip Melanchthon, who was his coworker, and say to him, "Come on, Philip, let's sing the 46th Psalm."

And then he would sing it in his own strong version. One version goes like this: "A sure stronghold our God is he, a timely shield and weapon. Our help he'll be and set us free from every ill can happen." That's the hymn that we know as "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God." Now, Luther wrote about the psalm. Here's what he said about it: "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."

I love the way Luther writes. He writes with such force, and in his translation, he's given us a forceful hymn which we sing and, of course, is loved throughout the church today. Another great Lutheran, H.C. Leupold, who is one of the great commentators on the Psalms, says of Psalm 46: "Few psalms breathe the spirit of sturdy confidence in the Lord in the midst of very real dangers as strongly as does this one."

Now, Luther was rather loose in his translation, not doing a close rendering of the psalm. The hymn we just sang a few moments ago to the tune Materna, number 37, is a much closer rendering than "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God." But no stanza is closer to it than Luther's first stanza and what is said in this psalm in verse 1.

That's because Luther understood it. Verse 1 says, "God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble." What the verse is saying, you can understand it in the English, though it's a bit stronger even in the Hebrew, is this: it is God who is our strength and our refuge. God alone, God, he and no other.

We need to learn that because living in the midst of a materialistic world as we do, and among people who do not think in a spiritual way, we find ourselves thinking in other ways as well. We say, "Well, what kind of security am I going to have in this world?" And we say, "Well, what you have to do is get an awful lot of money." Many people look to money for their security in life.

They're like the rich man in Jesus' parable, you know, who had such a good harvest. He laid it all up in barns and then he said to himself, "You have plenty of good things laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink, and be merry." Jesus said he didn't know that that very night his soul was going to be required of him.

All the money that he could acquire, all the material things that he could lay up, would not protect him at the final judgment or give him security when he stood in danger of the wrath of God. If the truth be told, money doesn't even save you or keep you protected against the heartbreak or the failure or the sin or the danger or the disaster that we experience here. It's a very bad place to look for your security.

Some people say, "Well, what I trust are my personal skills or my training or my talents." Of course, people can have all those things and can experience very severe reversals of fortune. Some people say, "Well, I deal in relationships, and what I care about are my friends and my family. That's where I get my security." But those things don't always last. Family can be taken away.

Reformers knew all of that. That's why they said we mustn't look to the world for any real security. The world passes away, Jesus said that, and all of the desires thereof. The only real security that anyone can find is in God. And so they sang the hymn: "Let goods and kindred go, this mortal life also. The body they may kill; God's truth abideth still. His kingdom is forever." And so they looked to him.

Now, that first verse says something else. Not only does it say that God alone is our refuge and strength, it tells us that he is our refuge and our strength. That's saying two different things about him. A refuge is that into which you fly. It's a stronghold where you go for safekeeping. When we're secure in God, it is true, as one of the later psalms is going to say, 10,000 will fall at your right hand and 1,000 at your left, but it's not going to come to you because you're secure in God. The Reformers understood that. They were under threats of death and they were in great danger, but they were secure in God.

But there's another kind of help we need, and that is because sometimes in life, things do affect us. We will suffer in various ways, or sin will come into our lives, or sometimes we're battered by circumstances. When that is the case, then we need the second thing verse 1 speaks of. We need an inner strength in order to overcome it. We're able to say in times like that, "God is my strength. He enables me to go on," even in these things that are so difficult.

Now, that is true, not only in minor things, but even when the most terrible calamities come. That's what verses 2 and 3 are talking about: "Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam and the mountains shake with their surging."

Some of the commentators suggest that what that is really doing is referring to God's acts of creation as told in Genesis when he separated the earth from the waters on the third or fourth day of creation. It's saying even if there should be a reversal of the creation, and all of the land should fall back into the sea and everything in life be shaken, even if chaos should come again, even in a time like that, I'm secure in God because God is the eternal one and he's never shaken.

I never read those verses anymore that I don't remember something Elizabeth Elliot said when she was here with us at one of our conferences. You know her story, I'm sure. She lost two husbands. One was Jim Elliot. He was killed by the Auca Indians in Ecuador when he was trying to reach them with the gospel along with other missionaries. The second was Addison Leitch. He was a professor, president of a seminary out in Western Pennsylvania, and he had cancer, and he died with the cancer in a long illness.

She was trying to talk about what those things mean, and she used these verses to refer to it. She said when experiences like these come into your life, it's like having everything that seems to be dependable shaken and give way. Mountains are falling, earth is reeling, and in such a time, you need to know that your only real security is in God. What you need to do, she says, is what the psalmist talks about later and quotes God as saying, "Be still and know that I am God." God's God whether we realize it or not, but it's a comfort to us to realize it. What we have to do is quiet our hearts, be still and rest in him.

Now, that's the first stanza. This psalm is divided into three stanzas and there's a certain progression in them. Each of them concludes with the word Selah. For example, it means to pause and to think. The last two have a refrain that closes them. We're going to look at that as we come to the end because it's really our response to what is said.

That first stanza, the one we just looked at, says that God is our refuge at all times, even in the worst calamities. The second stanza begins to talk about the city, the city of Jerusalem and how God is a defense there of the city. Now, there are two ways of looking at the city. One is to look at it in reference to the earthly city of Jerusalem alone, exclusively.

Of course, there are many psalms that do that. They refer to Jerusalem and praise God for the way he defended the city. Even in the Psalter, there are many psalms that do. They're called the "Songs of Zion," such psalms as Psalm 48, 76, 84, 87, 122, and there may be some others as well. Now, if that's the case in this stanza, the river is that stream of Siloam in Jerusalem. It was the only source of water in the city of Jerusalem, still is today except for what is piped in. And when it talks about the holy place where the Most High dwells, that's the holy place in the tabernacle on Mount Zion. So if it's referring to that, it's saying God is defending his city and he'll defend it against all who might attack it.

Now, it would seem that humanly speaking, that is what the psalm is written about: a great deliverance that God provided on an occasion when armies of some sort marched against the city. There are some examples of that, two theories. On one occasion, we read about it in 2 Chronicles 20, the armies of Ammon, Moab, and Mount Seir came to attack Jerusalem in the days of Jehoshaphat. He was alarmed by what was happening. He didn't have resources to stand against this great army that was coming to him from the east.

He prayed about it publicly, asked God to intervene and help him, and God did. God sent the prophet to him and said what you're to do is take the people and go to a high place where you can watch the armies come, but don't engage them in battle. You just stand there and watch. And so they did. What they saw is that the armies fell into fighting among themselves. The armies of Ammon and Moab turned against the armies of Mount Seir and there was a great slaughter.

The text says the men of Judah came to the place later and they looked toward that vast army and they saw only dead bodies on the ground. No one had escaped. So on that occasion, God intervened in a special way and delivered the people. Carl Delitzsch, one of the great scholars of the Psalms, thinks that that's what this is referring to, and he has a good argument for it. That account in 2 Chronicles 20 mentions the sons of Korah, and it's said they praised God for his deliverance on that occasion. Now, this psalm, Psalm 46, is by the sons of Korah. So it might very well be that this is the psalm they wrote on that occasion praising God for his deliverance.

There's a second and better-known incident, and that is the deliverance of Jerusalem from Sennacherib during the reign of Hezekiah. That story is told in 2 Kings 18 and 19. Sennacherib's field commander was directing the troops on that occasion. They had already overthrown a lot of the other states roundabout. They marched against Jerusalem, they surrounded it, nobody could get in or out.

Then the field commander stood before the walls and he cried out in the language of the people so everybody would understand, "Don't think your God is going to deliver you. Look, all the other nations roundabout have fallen; your city's going to fall to us too." Poor Hezekiah didn't know what to do. While he was trying to figure out what to do, the field commander sent a letter to Hezekiah that said the same thing, boasting about the strength of the god of the Assyrians.

Hezekiah, we're told in those chapters, laid up that letter before the Lord and he asked the Lord, "What shall I do?" What could he do in a situation like that? He didn't have any strength to stand against those armies. And God sent Isaiah to him. Isaiah was in Jerusalem on that occasion, the great prophet of the time, and Isaiah said, "You don't have to do anything. God is going to intervene and deliver the city, and Sennacherib's going to turn around and he's going to go back to Nineveh and he's going to die there."

That's what happened. That night the Angel of the Lord, we're told, went out in the camp of the Assyrians and killed 185,000 of them. When Sennacherib woke up the next morning, there they were, they were all dead. And the text is written that way: when the people got up the next morning, there were all the dead bodies. So Sennacherib, the king of Assyria, broke camp and withdrew. He returned to Nineveh and stayed there, and he was killed in Nineveh by his own sons when he returned.

Some of you who have studied English literature may know that Lord Byron wrote a very lilting poem about that event called "The Destruction of Sennacherib." You might know it because of the way it begins: "The Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold, his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold." For those who study English literature, that's written in anapestic with four beats to the line. That's why everybody quotes it; it's a good illustration of an anapestic way of doing it. Well, Lord Byron wrote that. Now, most of the commentators think that that is the event. I really don't know. I think the evidence is inconclusive, but I do think there was an occasion on which God delivered the people and that this psalm was composed on that occasion.

And yet we also have to say, don't miss this, that when we're talking about the city of God in the Bible, we're dealing with a theme that is far bigger than the mere earthly city of Jerusalem. That's because quite often that phrase "the city of God" is used for that heavenly dwelling place that God has prepared for his people. That's where Jesus said he was going to prepare a place for his own. We find it there in the Old Testament and we find it in the New Testament and at the very end of the Book of Revelation, there's the city of God prepared for God's people.

That's the city to which Abraham looked. He wasn't looking to Jerusalem, earthly Jerusalem, he was looking to the heavenly Jerusalem because he knew it was a city that has foundations because the builder of that city and the architect of that city is God. Now you see that means that we can look at this psalm and we can say yes, it refers to an earthly Jerusalem, but that doesn't mean that it doesn't have anything to say to us because we're looking for that heavenly city prepared by God where God is going to defend his own against everything.

Now, you see how that is progressing. In that first stanza, here we are on earth and we're saying God is our refuge and strength, no matter what may come to us, even if our whole universe collapses around our feet. God is nevertheless the security of his saints. We get to the second stanza and already our thoughts are lifted up to heaven and we say, yes, he's prepared a place for us there, and nothing is ever going to shake that heavenly city.

We come to the third stanza and we find something else. It's using the imagery that we had earlier: "Come see the works of the Lord, the desolations he has brought on the earth." That reminds us of those occasions where the people were to stand on the city and look down and see how God had delivered them from their enemies, all those dead bodies of those who had come to destroy them. Come, see the works of the Lord.

But you don't have to read very far in that stanza to realize that that language is now heightened to talk about the destruction of all the opposition, of all the armies of the world against the Almighty. The kind of battle that is going to be fought and won by God Almighty in the final day. At that time, you see, he makes wars cease, he breaks the bow, he shatters the spear, he burns the shields with fire. That is what is talked about in Psalm 2. Second Psalm says that the kings of the earth take counsel together and conspire against the Lord and against his anointed one saying, "Let's break their bonds asunder," and God in heaven laughs. He says, "I'm going to destroy them all." How foolish it is to think that you can fight with God Almighty.

It's the same thing we find as we go to the book of Revelation, because as you come to the very end of that book, you see that great battle prepared, the battle of Armageddon, and there all the nations of the earth are lined up against God and his anointed, and he destroys them all. Verse 9 says he makes wars cease. He's establishing peace.

But let me point out that there are two kinds of peace. There's a negotiated peace. The other kind of peace is a peace that's imposed by a victor on the conquered. Now, it is the latter peace that the psalmist is talking about here. You see, as long as men can fight or women can fight, they're going to fight God. But God is one day going to subdue all of that opposition because he's the Almighty one.

There's an illustration of this in a medal from the Roman times. It's from the time of Vespasian, one of the emperors. After all his wars in Italy and other places, he struck this medal, and on one side of it, it had the goddess of peace. In one hand, the goddess of peace was holding the olive branch, which indicated a negotiated peace. And in the other hand, the goddess was holding a torch with which she was burning up the armor of the enemy.

Now, that's exactly what this is saying here: "He breaks the bow and shatters the spear; he burns the shields with fire." You see, if that's the case, then when it says in verse 10, "Be still and know that I am God," this is not a call for meditation on the part of God's people, important as that may be. It's a word directed to the enemies, and it says, "Just put down your arms and be quiet because I am God and I'm going to be exalted in the earth." There is going to be a day when every mouth will be stopped and all of the weapons will be laid down and God is going to reign supreme. That day is a day for which we must prepare. Nobody can hope to resist God in that day.

Now, we have the last verse and it's the refrain. It occurs not only here in verse 11, we also have it in verse 7. It's the response and it says, "The Lord Almighty is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge." Who is this one who is the refuge and strength of his people? Well, it answers in those two names: the Lord Almighty and the God of Jacob.

The Lord Almighty literally means the Lord of Hosts. In the Hebrew for it, it's Jehovah Sabbaoth, the Lord of Hosts. It's the armed hosts of God. That's appropriate in the context of this psalm, and it's striking that that word occurs. I said when we were studying an earlier psalm as we began the second book of the Psalter that in the first book of the Psalter, the dominant name for God is Jehovah. It occurs many dozens of times and the word Elohim, meaning God, only occurs maybe about 10 times. But then in the second book of the Psalter, the word Elohim predominates and the word Jehovah doesn't occur very often.

But here it does: Jehovah Sabbaoth, the Lord of Hosts, because of course, he is the one who delivered the city in the battles. This Lord of Hosts is the one who stands with us. You recall that story about Elisha at Dothan? He was there in the city with his servant and the armies of Ben-Hadad surrounded the city. They were trying to catch Elisha because he'd been telling the plans of the King of Syria to the Jewish kings so the Jewish king could get his armies out of the way and they escaped all the traps that Ben-Hadad was laying for them.

And so when he found it out, he tried to capture Elisha. Early in the morning, after all these troops had surrounded the city by night, the servant goes out and he's out there to draw water. I suppose he was sleepy in the morning, and he's trying to get his bucket in the well. As he's drawing it up, I imagine all of a sudden he looks up and he sees all the soldiers and the chariots and the horses around the city. He drops the bucket back in the well, he runs back into the city, he says, "Oh, my master, what shall we do?"

Elisha prays that God will open the young man's eyes and his eyes are opened. The story tells us he sees the mountains filled with horses and chariots of fire roundabout Elisha. Elisha said, "Greater are they who are with us than they who are with them." Now, it's the Lord of Hosts that commands those heavenly forces who protects us and surrounds us too.

The second name that occurs here is the God of Jacob. That's quite a different thing. Jacob was the third of the three great Jewish patriarchs and he was the least attractive of the three. He was a schemer, it's what his name implies. He didn't trust God very much, at least it took him a whole lifetime to learn how to do it. And yet, the interesting thing is that the God of Abraham was no less his God, and God describes himself as the God of Jacob.

Alexander Maclaren has an interesting comment. He says the God of Jacob is the Lord of Host, but even more wonderful than that, the Lord of Host is the God of Jacob. You and I are quite often like Jacob. We're weak and we're often unattractive, but this God, this great God, is our God as well. So the psalm comes down to that point, and the point is this: is that great God your God? Do you trust him? Do you know him? You get to know him through Jesus Christ. Is he your God? He's the one who is a refuge and a strength for his people, and he will be with you if you know him.

Let me tell you about one who did, John Wesley. John Wesley, on the day he died, had nearly lost his voice. He was very, very weak. They could hardly understand what he was saying, and they were leaning over trying to hear what he would have to say. But on that day, suddenly with the little bit of strength that was left to him, he called out, "The best of all is God is with us!" And then he raised his hand slightly and waved it a bit in triumph and he exclaimed it again, "The best of all is God is with us!" And then he fell back and he died. Those were Wesley's last words.

Well, is the Lord Almighty with you? He was with Martin Luther, saw him through all those dangerous days of the Reformation. He was with John Wesley. He's with his people, all of them. The storms of life will come and the greatest storm of all will be the final judgment. Make sure that your life is hid with Christ in God and that he's your refuge and your strength.

Let's pray. Our Father, we're thankful for this great psalm, one that many love and have tested on the field of battle, spiritual battles, temptations and dangers, and have found it to be true and give testimony to it, even with their dying breath. Grant that when the time comes for us to die and we appear before you, we will be able to say, as those saints who have preceded us have no doubt said, the psalm is true. The Lord God is our refuge and our strength. He has proved himself to be that all our days, and we give him praise for it. Grant that we might grow in that faith and triumph in it too. For Jesus' sake, Amen.

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