Our Sermons

Bible Passage: Psalm 46
Pastor: Pastor Schlicht
Sermon Date:  November 1, 2020

Toys littered the ground, bundled bags of trash lined the hallway leading to the door, the whole place smelled like a diaper. I sat on the couch and marveled that she could manage three children in a one-bedroom apartment. She told me her story that day—a tale of bad choices, misfortune, and abandonment. She finally choked out the question, “Pastor, what am I going to do?” I honestly couldn’t tell her what to do. I found myself only telling her what not to do: “Don’t give up. Don’t think that God doesn’t care about you. Don’t let the Devil twist God’s blessing of your children into something you regret. Don’t think that this situation is hopeless.” Later that year, our church helped her get into a larger apartment. She has since found a job and has moved to a safer area. She’s not out of the woods yet, but things are looking up. It wasn’t so important that she figured out exactly what to do that day, what was most important is what she didn’t do. Often in times of difficulty, the question of Christian faith isn’t “What am I going to do?” But, “What am I not going to do?” That is the application of Psalm 46 today. The question isn’t “What are you going to do?” Because our God commands us to, “Be still.” The only question he wants you to be concerned with is: “What are you not going to do?”

Psalm 46 is a beautiful piece of Hebrew poetry. It is all based on one conceptual metaphor: God is pictured as a Mighty Fortress, just as the hymn says. This is established by the Psalm’s twice-repeated refrain: 

The Lord Almighty is with us;

    the God of Jacob is our fortress.

Keep this metaphor in mind because everything else applies to it and it will transform how you understand the words. The Psalm begins:

God is our refuge and strength,

    an ever-present help in trouble.

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 quake with their surging.

So now let’s apply the metaphor. God is a mighty fortress and we, as his people, are pictured then as the city within the walls of that fortress. God is therefore our refuge, our strength, an ever-present in trouble. The fortified walls of a city never take a day off and neither does our God. Even if we don’t think about him, God is still protecting us.  We will never know just how many things he protects us from. 

It reminds me of this scene in the book of Numbers. The Israelites are traveling through the desert and are constantly complaining about things and even saying they wished that they had stayed in Egypt as slaves. They pass into Moab and the king of Moab is scared because this massive nation is now camping in his territory. So he hires a pagan sorcerer named Balaam to curse the Israelites. So Balaam climbs up into the mountains which overlook the Israelite encampment. But when Balaam opens his mouth to curse them, the Lord forces him to speak a blessing. Three different times Balaam attempts to curse them, but God forces him to utter blessings. So here’s Israel complaining down in the camp while up in the mountains God is protecting and even blessing them.

I wonder how many times the Devil has sought to sift us like wheat, but God has prevented him. I wonder how many times a car missed us that should have hit us. I wonder how many times God turned someone’s hatred toward us into a blessing and we were completely unaware. Like the walls of a city that prevent it from being breached by a marauding band at night, so too our God is an ever-present help who protects us from harm both known and unknown.  

The Psalmist is so confident of this that he says that even if the earth should give way we should not be afraid because God is with us. Even if the mountains would sink back again into the waters out of which they appeared on the third day of Creation, we need not fear because God is our fortress! In biblical poetry mountains often represent that which is unchanging or immovable. And the sea is often used to represent chaos and unpredictable danger. I think many of us know what it is like to see mountains fall into the heart of the sea. To lose things in our life that we thought would always be there. To see a spouse walk out the door in divorce. To see a loved one succumb to death, to see whatever it is in our life that we once thought immovable suddenly fall away and we are left with uncertainty. It is in those moments, that the Psalm reminds us not to be afraid. Because while the mountains may be falling, God, our Mighty Fortress, will not be shaken. Our Mighty Fortress is not affected by any earthly calamity, because its foundation is in heaven itself. Let the mountains fall, the promises of God still stand. When mountains start to fall, when the earth gives way, even when the sea of chaos begins to surge, remember that the question isn’t, “What are you going to do?” It’s “What are you not going to do?” The Psalmist says, “Therefore we will not fear.”  The last verse of Luther’s hymn, which we sang just before the sermon says this, “And do what they will—hate, steal, hurt, or kill—though all may be gone, our victory is won. The Kingdom’s ours forever!” In fact, the original German that Luther wrote is even stronger in my opinion. Nehmen sie den Leib, Gut, Ehr, Kind und Weib: lass fahren dahin, sie haben’s kein’ Gewinn, das Reich muss uns doch bleiben. [They take our life, goods, dignity, child and wife. Let these all be gone, they haven’t won anything; the kingdom still remains ours.] Stop looking over the ramparts at all that could go wrong. A mighty Fortress is our God. “Don’t be afraid.” You have a solid fortress around your soul whose walls cannot be shaken.”

Verses 4-5 gives us another point of confidence:

There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God,

    the holy place where the Most High dwells.

God is within her, she will not fall;

    God will help her at break of day.

There is a dramatic shift in the scene here. We move from the chaotic, thrashing of a restless sea, to the bank of a quiet river within the city of God. The land of Israel is a place where water is rather scarce.  So scarce that even a little of it would often spell the difference between living and dying, or even between victory and defeat. In fact, back then one of the most effective ways to overthrow a fortified city was to cut off its water supply, to siege it. 

When King David, 1000 years before the birth of Jesus, decided to make his own capital the last outpost of Canaanites in the Promised Land, the mountain fortress of Jebus (which he would later rename Jerusalem), the Jebusites were confident that their city could not be taken because they had a water supply.  With great effort, they had tunneled down through bedrock beneath the city to a nearby spring, and so they taunted David that even the blind and crippled among them could defend their city against the armies of Israel.  David solved that one, the Bible tells us, by sending his army up the water shaft to occupy the city.  The Jebusites’ source of confidence had become their Achilles’ heel. David’s son and successor, Solomon, who built the great temple in Jerusalem, also expended a lot of effort improving the waterworks.  Among other things, Solomon fortified the outside end of the old Jebusite tunnel so nobody else could try Dad’s old trick.  And then, a number of generations later, King Hezekiah supervised the mining of another tunnel (it’s still there and still in use, over a thousand feet long and about twenty feet high) to assure the safety of the city by securing its water supply.

The point of this engineering history is to help you understand the significance of the river here in Psalm 46. When the city of God is threatened and encompassed by foes, we will not hunger or thirst because a river of grace flows within this kingdom. It is hard not to think about the Word of God which is accompanied by the Holy Spirit when I read about this river. Much like the living water of Psalm 1, we are sustained and strengthened through the water of God’s Word and Sacrament. We have a pure spring of spiritual strength that will never run dry. Even when other rivers of wisdom are cut off, even when other sources become polluted, we have a constant current of truth and comfort for us in the Bible. Let the Devil siege our city, let him cut off all other resources. Our souls will still flourish and be nourished because there is a river whose streams make glad the city of God!

The last portion of the Psalm includes a description of God’s offensive power: 

Nations are in uproar, kingdoms fall;

       he lifts his voice, the earth melts.

Come and see what the Lord has done,

    the desolations he has brought on the earth.

He makes wars cease to the ends of the earth.

      He breaks the bow and shatters the spear;

            he burns the shields with fire.

Our God is a fortress, but he does more than protect and sustain us. He fights for us. Or more so, he dominates for us. I think of when Sennacherib, the King of Assyria, approached Jerusalem in 2 Kings 18-19. The Assyrians had already besieged Samaria and deported the Northern Kingdom. They had rolled over every city in Judah and were heading toward Jerusalem. But before they did King Sennacherib sent a message to King Hezekiah of Jerusalem. He told him “Do not trust in your God. Every other god and king has perished before me. Give up the city.” And so King Hezekiah took that letter into the temple and spread it out before the Lord and prayed for deliverance. Well, that night the Lord sent an angel into the Assyrian camp and the next morning 185,000 Assyrian soldiers didn’t wake up. The ground was littered with dead bodies. King Sennacherib retreated and was killed soon after. Our God is more than capable of winning battles for his people. He is more than capable of bringing desolation! Earthly powers wield their might, puny political parties spend a bunch of money, but ultimately God brought this world into existence with his voice, and if he wanted he need only raise his voice again to melt the earth. He is in control. He is all-powerful. And he is your Mighty Fortress.

Which brings us to the climax of verse 10: These words stand out from the rest of the Psalm because they are the only words of the psalm which are spoken by the LORD himself. 

He says, “Be still, and know that I am God;

     I will be exalted among the nations,

       I will be exalted in the earth.”

God tells us today, “Be still.” So many of our worries and anxieties come from the deep root of thinking that we are supposed to fix everything, that it’s our duty to tame all the chaos in our lives and this world. But that simply isn’t true. Who among us can see the future? Who among us can control the pandemic? Who among us gets to decide the election? Who among us can stop themselves from aging? Who among us can protect their children from everything? Who among us can cause someone to fall in love with them? Who among us here can bring back the dead? Who among us, by worrying can add a single hour to their day? Why are we so intent on trying to control things that were never within our ability to control? The Lord lovingly rebukes our restlessness, our worrying, and our self-absorbed hyperactivity.  He says, “Be still and know that I am God.” Remember who God is. Remember that the One who loved you and gave his life for you is also the one who holds all authority in heaven and earth. Remember that Jesus, the one who hung upon a cross to forgive your sins is also your Mighty Fortress. He is the one who will come to judge the living and the dead, he is the one who breaks the bow and shatters the spear. Jesus is the Word of God which makes you glad, which sustains your soul. 

Stop asking, “What am I going to do?”  The question is: “What are you not going to do?” I pray, that filled with the Holy Spirit, you are not going to be afraid of the future. I pray that you are not going to stress out trying to control everything. I pray, most of all you are not going to forget who is God and who is not. Your God is a Mighty Fortress. “What are you not going to do?” Amen.