So hear now the word of the Lord, Psalm 91 and I will be reading out of the ESV the English Standard Version.

91 He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High
will abide in the shadow of the Almighty.
2 I will say to the Lord, “My refuge and my fortress,
my God, in whom I trust.”

3 For he will deliver you from the snare of the fowler
and from the deadly pestilence.
4 He will cover you with his pinions,
and under his wings you will find refuge;
his faithfulness is a shield and buckler.
5 You will not fear the terror of the night,
nor the arrow that flies by day,
6 nor the pestilence that stalks in darkness,
nor the destruction that wastes at noonday.

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

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

11 For he will command his angels concerning you
to guard you in all your ways.
12 On their hands they will bear you up,
lest you strike your foot against a stone.
13 You will tread on the lion and the adder;
the young lion and the serpent you will trample underfoot.

14 “Because he holds fast to me in love, I will deliver him;
I will protect him, because he knows my name.
15 When he calls to me, I will answer him;
I will be with him in trouble;
I will rescue him and honor him.
16 With long life I will satisfy him
and show him my salvation.”Psalm 91:1-16, ESV

This is the word of the Lord.

Well, back in the fourth and fifth centuries, B.C., so about 2500 years ago or so, right around the time of the great Greek philosopher Socrates, there were two other Greek philosophers, lesser known by the names of Lucretius and Democritus. In the course of their work, these two philosophers made the argument that the cosmos, that is the entire creative universe, was formed when an infinite number of small, tiny particles called atoms moving about at random, through an infinite void, came together completely by accident. When that happened, according to these two philosophers, the universe, as we know it was created. According to Lucretius and Democritus and those who followed in their steps who are known as the Atomists, the universe, they believe, sprung up at random. It was, in other words, a cosmic accident.

You see, they had no place Lucretius and Democritus and the Atomists, for God or the gods and their understanding in the conception of the origin of the universe. They had no role for God or the gods in the present structure and mechanisms of the world as they understood it. Therefore they taught that the world, the universe, really has no purpose either. It wasn't created according to them with meaning and purpose, and we're not really aiming towards anything higher in purpose, either. In many ways, that belief system is the ancient ancestor to that of many modern day atheists.

Now, as Christians, this is a belief system that we rightly reject. After all, the Bible teaches us from start to finish that God created the world and everything in it. When he did that, he created everything good. He created mankind as the pinnacle of his creation. He created all things with a particular goal in mind, his glory and our union and communion with him. That God we've purpose and meaning into the fabric of the cosmos, of the universe, is baked in the historic and biblical Christianity that we happily confess.

Yet so often our experience in the sinful and broken world suggests sometimes that maybe the Atomists were right. After all, we all know that disease doesn't discriminate between Christians and non-Christians. Collateral damage in war swallows up the innocent just as it does armies. Take one look at the history of contemporary events, and it might very well seem as if we're confined to nothing more than a harsh world with cruel people, where justice is lacking and we are daily subject to the harsh and indiscriminate dictates of fate.

If this is how the world seems to us, sometimes, especially when we're submersed and woe, our psalmist this morning invites us to see the world with eyes of faith. He invites us to peer behind the unfolding of events in this world and consider that above everything else, there is indeed a king who's calling the shots. There's purpose in this world. There's a destination that we, as the people of God, are heading towards. This king who's ruling and governing the universe, we learn, also takes special notice and care of his beloved subjects in the process. Though our eyes may suggest that we reside in a world of chaos and disorder and aimlessness, and that's it, well, our psalm this morning tells a different story. It tells us that's not the case. We indeed have a God to cling to in this life, who preserves us and defends us in the present and will one day usher us into his glory.

So our big idea this morning is this hold fast to the God of many names, amidst the many menaces of this age.

If you're using one of the sermon worksheets, you can kind of see the outline we're going to be using to structure our overview of the passage.

First, we'll talk about the God who provides deliverance. Who is that God? Second, the deliverance that God provides. Then third, the fellowship that we, as the people of God, enjoy joy as a consequence.

1. The God who Provides Deliverance
2. The Deliverance that God Provides
3. The fellowship that we Enjoy as a Consequence

The God who Provides Deliverance

Let's start out first with a God who provides deliverance at some point last year. I read that the late Prince Philip, the late husband of Queen Elizabeth ll, had by the time he died earlier last year, an official royal title that was about one hundred and thirty words long. He was I won't read the whole thing, but he was Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, Earl of Meredith and Baron Greenwich, Knight of the Most Noble Order of the Garter, Knight of the Most Ancient and Most Noble Order of the Thistle, and so on and so on. Prince Philip was apparently a royal figure of many, many names.

What we learned at the outset of our Psalm is that the Lord, our God, is likewise the great king of many names. We'll see a number of them packed just into the first two verses. So let's briefly look at some of the names that are given to us here. First, in verse one, we hear God described as the Most High God and a lot of significance wrapped up in all of these names, this one included. You see this name the Most High God tells us that the Lord is a God who’s exalted over heaven and Earth. He is, as both Melchizedek and Abraham confess in the Book of Genesis, the possessor of Heaven and Earth. He stands above all things. He's the owner of everything that he created.

He also is a God who exercises real authority in his world. Isn't just stand above his world, he also enters into his world. He's not in the slightest closed off from what happens in his world, and this is communicated in the second name that we're given in our passage. Where we read in verse one that he's likewise called the Almighty One. This is a name that communicates God's power in heaven and on Earth. This implies that this is a God who also wields that power, according to all of his gracious and just and wise purposes.

When we move to verse two, we hear yet another name of describing the Lord, he is called very simply The Lord. in Hebrew, this is arguably the most significant name because this is the name Yahweh. The name by which God revealed himself to Moses in the desert in Exodus chapter three. Now, theologians note that the name Yahweh communicates some pretty important things like God's immutability, which means that God doesn't change. He doesn't change in his essence. He doesn't change in his promises. He doesn't change in the love that he has for his people. He doesn't change in his character. He doesn't change in the covenant relationship that he established and bound himself to with his people.

The name Yahweh also communicates God's self-existence. Which means that unlike us, God isn't dependent on anyone else. He doesn't rely on us to build his kingdom or to grow his church. He doesn't need our worship to inflate his ego. He's self-existent. As you can see, there's a lot that's wrapped up in this name Yahweh.

Then we read one more name that's given to God. The end of verse to where the Psalm is simply calls upon God in a personal way, as my God. Now this is a name that goes back to the very beginning of the creation account in Genesis, a name that communicates God's absolute power over all that he made. A name that, when it's invoked by the psalmist, reminds us of the security we have as the people of God. We belong to a God, think about that, we belong to a God who spoke the cosmos in the creation. Amazing. Spurgeon, I think, is correct when he comments on this, "My God means all and more than all than the heart can conceive by way of security."

Now, as theologians, rightly note, God is strictly speaking nameless within himself. God is infinite and incomprehensible. If you want to learn more about that, go to Brandon's Sunday school class. No name can really capture the fullness of who he is. Yet, nevertheless, he graciously, the Lord graciously accommodates himself to his people. People like us through these many names so that we can know what kind of God he is.

Now, perhaps for you, this brief venture over the last three to five minutes or so into the various names of God may have seemed like a dry exercise. Something that's maybe divorced from the practical stuff of life. I suppose it's a good thing to know that God is triune. The early church spent a lot of ink to get that one right. It's good to know the attributes of God. It's interesting to know that the scriptures attribute a variety of names to God. Yet, what practical implication does all of that carry for you and me as we live our lives?

Well, bear in mind something important, that the names of God indicate nature. God's names tell us what God is like. What we believe about God significantly impacts the way that we live in God's world.

Now I've been told before that I give a lot of World War Two illustrations, but let me illustrate this point using another. In July of 1944, at the height of World War Two, the U.S. forces were nearing the end of a pretty important battle called the Battle of Saipan in the Pacific Theater. U.S. forces fought for about three weeks on Saipan. They nearly had the island secure, and they were soon to turn it into a base for long range bombers to bomb the mainland. Just as the U.S. forces were securing the final pockets of Saipan, they witnessed something that was unspeakably horrible from a distance. They watched in horror as hundreds of Japanese civilians, including mothers with their children, leapt over the edge of a number of cliffs to their death below. One of these cliffs was later named Suicide Cliff for the events that transpired. So why in the world? Why in the world would civilians kill themselves in number by jumping off cliffs as U.S. soldiers approached? What kind of beliefs could ever prompt someone to take a horrible course of action like that?

Well, during the Battle of Saipan, many of these Japanese civilians were so indoctrinated by a Japanese propaganda machine that sought to paint the U.S. military forces as barbaric, brutal, and inhumane in their treatment of civilians. Such that should they fall into U.S. hands, the propaganda maintained they would either be tortured or eaten alive. So many civilians were convinced that instead of waiting for the American army to arrive and do their worst, it was better to take their own lives. Understand that such a horrible outcome was driven in large part by what they believed in their heart of hearts about the nature of their enemy.

Now, to be sure, it's perplexing to conceive how someone could ever arrive at a conclusion, like many of the Japanese civilians arrived at on Saipan. But it goes to show that what we believe in our heart of hearts about the nature of someone can influence such a drastic course of action. The question this raises then as it relates to the text before us, is whether or not, we really believe that God is what the psalmist proclaims in our passage. In other words, if we really believed that God is just, we wouldn't be a people who seek vengeance every time we're sinned against. Yet, how often do our temperatures rise when someone sins against us? How often do we fantasize about turning the tables on those who maligned our character? Or think about God's mercy, if we really believe in her heart of hearts, that God is merciful towards us, that he's compassionate and kind and takes pity on us despite what our sin and rebellion against him has merited. Well, we would also graciously and willingly extend mercy to others, too. But are we often prompted in that way? Or do we rather just show compassion only to those who haven't offended us, only to those who have in our book earned it?

If we really believe that God is a refuge and a shelter, well, then we would regularly find comfort and assurance in him and his promises throughout the present age. Rather than pursuing comfort and security as we so often do in the arms of other lovers. Understand, friends, that what we believe heart, mind and soul about God inevitably impacts our approach to the practical stuff in life. So what do you really believe about God and what informs those beliefs?

Let me encourage all of us that as we live our lives under the sun, we have to let the scriptures, rather than experience, inform our most deeply held beliefs about God. Study, make it a regular practice to study what the Bible says about God. Of course, the scriptures have a lot to say about how we live our lives as exiles and sojourners in this world. They have a lot to say about how we love our neighbors and raise our kids. Above everything else, the Lord is the main character in the Scriptures. The Bible is first and foremost about God, and we would do well to make the study of God central in our study of the Bible too.

Family devotions, if you do that, make it your habit of asking your kids before anything else what this passage or that passage says about God. Kids, as you study the Bible and you read a lot of perplexing passages, ask yourself what is this telling me about God? Make God the center because God is the center of the Bible. It's a whole story that's about God and the work of God in the lives of his people and in this world.

So the God the psalmist would have us know, the God our psalmist would have us cling to is the God who goes by many names. Those many names tell us many wonderful truths about God.

Now that, just in those first two verses, our psalmist has reflected a bit about who God is, he next place he goes in our passage is to tell us about what God does in the world. He tells us about the gracious deliverance that this same God works in our lives and in the world for the salvation of his people.

The Deliverance that God Provides

So when we turn to verses three to 13 and this leads to the second point, if you're following along the deliverance that God provides. When we turn to verses three to 13, we're turning to the heart of our passage. Throughout this passage, we hear some pretty remarkable, almost unbelievable promises about the present security and the deliverance that God provides for us people.

Remember, earlier we talked about how in this life under the sun, it so often seems like death doesn't discriminate. In the words of one recent musical, "Between the sinner and the saint, it takes and it takes and it takes." That's how it so often seems to us in our world, in our lives. Yet, well, this is what life under the sun so often looks like. From a divine perspective, the source indicates that the God of many names is faithful to pour out many promises to his people.

So let's look at some of these. First look, look at all the remarkable promises of deliverance and protection and shelter. We read, for example, how God promises deliverance from the snare of the fowler. That would be like a hunter's trap, deadly pestilence, disease. The psalmist promises that we have nothing to fear from the arrow that flies by day, nor the pestilence that stalks in darkness. Then later, he tells us in the psalm, in this central section, that that no plague will come near your tent. So whether the threat is more pronounced in the daytime or the nighttime. Whether the threat is unseen like arrows or unseen, like deadly pestilence. The Lord God promises protection and deliverance for his people, either through these things, notice that the psalmist still falls into the fowler’s trap and that's going to be an important point to remember, or sometimes from these threats.

Then we learn as we continue in the central section that God himself promises to be the source of protection and deliverance from these threats. He promises that amidst threats that are seen and unseen to be to us like a mother bird who covers us with his pinions. Under whose wings we find shelter. He promises that his truth will be to us, a shield and buckler, that's armor. To cite one commentator, "In American parlance, those who are protected are the Teflon people. Who shield is nothing less than the faithfulness of God."

Then our psalmist repeats in verse nine, what he already said in verse two, namely that the Lord is a dwelling place and refuge. Now these are bold promises when we take stock of what the psalmist is saying here. The promise is that might even seem to us on the surface of things to be foolishly optimistic, amidst the indiscriminate death that seems to fall on everyone and everything. Yet, when we understand the true nature of the greatest threats that we face in God's world, well, then we'll be in a better place to grasp the true nature of these promises that God holds out for us, too.

You see, to put it simply, God isn't promising in this passage that the faithful never succumb to death in this world. That wasn't true of Jesus, and that won't be true of us, either. The psalmist doesn't promise that we'll never be subject to injustice in this world, either. Nor does he promised that the Christian will never get sick and die. Of course, we know that those realities tragically persist in the present age. But he does promise us that in Christ we will be saved through those things.

Understand that, according to the scriptures, our primary battle as the people of God is just not, as the Apostle Paul puts it, against flesh and blood. Yes, we fight for justice in this world as much as we know how. But the eternal make or break battle we face in this world is just not of this world. Instead, as the Apostle Paul continues in Ephesians six, 'We wrestle against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil and the heavenly places." The deliverance that God promises in our passage is that even if pestilence or war or anything else we might experience in this broken and fallen world should cost us our lives, there's something bigger at stake. Namely the salvation of our souls.

Yet, for those who say with the psalmist, "My refuge and my fortress and my God in whom I trust." Well, friends, those are the Teflon people who will know the salvation of God, even in death.

You know, there's a story in the Bible, a little bit earlier in 2 Kings chapter six that I think is particularly instructive at this point. If you don't know that story, in this particular story, the prophet Elisha, who's on the scene, he wakes up one morning in the city he's living in to find that a king of a of a foreign nation. The king of Syria, has positioned himself and his army all around the city walls that Elisha living in, for the purpose of capturing Elisha. Can you imagine the terror of waking up one morning to find army camped around your house just for you? Well, that was Elisha experience. He woke up and found this hostile army was situated just outside the city walls. There just for him, to capture this one lowly prophet.

Now in the sight of all this stuff we read in 2 King chapter six that Elisha doesn't really flinch at all. He's not really that scared, but his servant is terrified that there's this army, a mass outside the city for his master. So what in the world are they going to do? Well, Elisha sees that a servant has bothered by this, and even though he's not, Elisha pauses and he prays, and he asks the Lord to show his servant the reality that they are indeed protected by the Lord, even when their situation might suggest otherwise. In an instant, the Lord we find answers Elisha prayer. The young servant opens his eyes and he sees another army, the Army of the Lord with horses and chariots of fire arrayed all around them outside the city walls, all along the hills as a hedge of protection.

Now understand that the promises of protection in our passage, our psalm are no less real than that, even though they are a more spiritual in nature. Actually because they're spiritual and eternal in nature they also carry with them far more gravitas, far more weight. The challenge for us is, of course, not to expect a divine army to wipe out every threat we face on the Earth. If somebody cuts you off in traffic. Don't expect a divine army to wipe out the person in front of you. Rather to begin looking at the world with eyes of faith.

You see, when all we see in this world is that the hand of death does not discriminate and that cancer comes just as equally to the righteous and the unrighteous. It's understandable why we might despair of life itself. When we see the world through the lens of scripture, through the lens of these, these promises. When we see the world, friends, through eyes of faith, we begin to identify first and foremost where our ultimate battle lies.

We begin to see that what we need saved from isn't necessarily the arrow that flies by day, although I suppose that would be terrifying to see. Rather what we need saved from are much bigger enemies, much more terrifying enemies like sin and death and the devil. We need saved from the grip that the wisdom of this world so often has on our minds. The promise for you and for me is that in Christ, the Lord offers this kind of protection, this kind of salvation for his people.

As we continue in the central section of our psalm, we also noticed that although the Lord most certainly does provide protection for us in this world, he doesn't just take a defensive posture towards his flock. We also notice in our psalm that the Lord also goes on the offensive, too. If you notice in verse seven, the psalmist proclaims, "A thousand may fall at your side, ten thousand at your right hand, but it will not come near you. You only look with your eyes and see the recompense of the wicked." Now understand that we weren't just weren't designed to live life as image bearers outside of union and communion with God in Christ.

Yet, tragically, when we see our neighbors or loved ones do just that, or maybe we think back to a time in our lives when we did just that, we often witness the tragic outcome for people we love. When God hands people over to their sin, when he gives natural man the delusions of his heart, the fall is hard. One day the Lord promises here in verse seven, that those who stand opposed to his purposes will fall not just upon their own folly, but upon the judgment of God. This is the tragic trajectory for any who stand against God and his purposes, and it's one that should drive all of us, I think, to pray and plead with those we love who are destined on their present trajectory to fall, to come back and to return under the wings of the God who loves us.

We then hear in verse 13 that in this offensive, that God goes on. In this judgment that will take place one day, we learn that we, as the church, are also involved somehow in this too. We read, "You will tread on the lion and the adder, the young lion and the serpent, you will trample underfoot." Friends, this is a promise that's held out for the church, just as Jesus tells his disciples in Luke 10:19, "I have given you authority to tread on serpents and scorpions." So too, Paul tells the church in Rome that the God of peace will soon crush Satan underneath your feet. So too that promise is repeated here in Psalm 91.

In short, God promises that evil will not prevail in this world. That sin, death and the devil who's presently bound will one day be judged and put away for good. As the hymn writer Samuel Stone puts it, "Mid toil and tribulation and tumult of her war, she waits the consummation of peace forevermore. Till with the vision glorious, her longing eyes are blessed and the great church victorious will be the church at rest." Friends, the Lord promises to be our refuge in the present, to be our rest and death, and to be our victory at the end of the age.

Perhaps this raises the question, why do all of these great promises of deliverance belong to us in the first place? Why are all of these startling promises ours to lay hold of? Why do they belong to us? Well, they belong to us only because they first belonged to Jesus, the one who ultimately brings about our deliverance. You see, when we read through the passage, we come to verses 11 through 12 in particular, you know, those verses may have sounded somewhat familiar to you.

The reason it's probably because you know those verses as they're cited in Matthew's gospel. Just last week, when Pastor Jacob preached on Matthew four, we heard that when Jesus started his public ministry, if you recall, he was led into the wilderness for 40 days where he was tempted by Satan. In the second temptation that Jesus underwent in that narrative, we heard Satan sight from this passage from Psalm 91:11-12 to persuade Jesus to jump off the pinnacle of the temple. Of course, we remember how Jesus a response to that? Well, he says in a state of humiliation, no, I'm not going to put God to the test. I find it ironic as an aside that Satan sites from these two verses in Psalm, 91, went in the very next verse, there's a promise of his own demise that you will trample the serpent. If anything, Satan is offering a good example of reading scripture out of context. What he omits is exactly what Jesus does in the fullness of time.

Understand that Jesus is the one who does what was promised all the way back in Genesis 3:15. Where right after the fall, God promised Adam and Eve that despite your sin, there would one day arise, one who would crush the head of the serpent. You see, Jesus resisted the temptation of Satan in Matthew four in order to crush the Kingdom of Satan by Matthew 28. While he hung on the cross, he refused to call down legions of angels so that he could tend to our ultimate need and command his angels for you and for me.

When we look back through this Psalm and we read of all of these incredible promises where God is both on the defensive for his church and goes on the offensive for his church, we need to understand that the only reason that these great promises are true for us is because they were first true of Jesus. Only Jesus clung to the Lord personally and perfectly and perpetually throughout his whole life. Only Jesus in his state of humiliation, made the Lord his dwelling place and his refuge. Only Jesus stands on his own record, while we would be judged and condemned on the basis of ours. The person that the source speaks to before anyone else and versus t13 is Jesus. Only through faith in this Jesus can we then appropriate these many and great promises in our own lives to.

The Fellowship we Enjoy

Now, the essence of these promises speak of God ruling and defending his people, even in death. He's a king who defends his church. Yet when we come to the final part of our passage in verses 14 through 16, we also learn that God, in the midst of defending and ruling us, tends to the needs of our soul too. This leads to our third point, the fellowship we enjoy.

Notice that when we reach verse 14, if you've been following along in the psalm, you may see that the speaker in verse 14 suddenly shifts. You see, up until now, the psalmist has been the primary speaker of the psalm, but now, in verse 14, the Lord steps into the Psalm and he begins to speak in the first person. This itself, I think, is reason for comfort. As one commentator put it, "It is the ground for confidence that the last word is spoken, not by us, but to us." You see, the parting words of the psalm are intended to shine the spotlight on our present lives. To remind us that while there's great protection in this world under the sun, well, we have refuge, a refuge in the Lord and a promise of deliverance under the wings of the Almighty God. We also learned that this is a personalized deliverance from a personal God who, in the midst of ruling and defending his people, also communes with you and me in the present. In short, the Lord is a warrior who fiercely defends and delivers his church. At the same time, he is our father who draws near to us in fellowship to tend to our souls.

Last summer, some of you may remember we had a rather large storm come through Omaha one evening pretty late. As I recall, in some places, the wind registered something like 95 miles per hour. Well, when this storm came through and I was watching through the windows that evening, as limbs tore off the trees in my backyard, the tornado sirens began to blare all around us. Now, at the time, I didn't know that sirens are automatically activated when wind speeds reach 75 miles an hour. If you didn't know that, now you do too. So there wasn't actually a tornado when I heard the sirens going off at one o'clock in the morning, but I didn't know that at the time. So my first response was tornado sirens, I'm going to go get the kids. So I rushed to the kid’s bedroom and grabbed the kids, and we shoot them down to the basement really quick.

Now, in the process, I only had one goal in mind in that instant. It was, to get to the basement. My kids, understandably at the time, they were in a daze. It was one a.m. They had no idea what was going on. They had questions, most kids do, that they needed answered. But I couldn't attend to any of those needs. I didn't want to answer their many, many questions when there was a greater need in view, their physical safety that I had to attend to first.

Understand that as human beings and especially as parents, we have limits. We have priorities. When we're stretched too thin trying to deal with an immediate threat or danger, we might not be the most pleasant people in the world, especially when you're in a daze at one a.m. and already worried about cleaning up your lawn the next morning.

Yet, just as the Lord we heard earlier in our psalm rules and defends and protects the church against our sworn enemies, just as he fiercely defends us from everything that would seek our destruction. We also learn that he fellowships with us as our father, and he tends to our troubled souls amidst troubled times. You see, we absolutely need a God who flexes his muscles from time to time, as it were. We also need a father who nourishes us with grace upon grace in the present. These promises lie at the heart of our final section. We were reminded that amidst the ways, the many ways that God flexes his muscles for us, he also tends to our souls.

Look with me, particularly at verse 15, where the Lord tells us, "When he calls to me, I will answer him. I will be with him in trouble. I will rescue him and honor him." You see the God of many names, even amidst the many troubles of this age, he hears our many prayers. In an earlier psalm, Psalm, 50, we hear an equally rich promise that the one who calls upon the name of the Lord in the day of trouble will be delivered by the Lord and in so calling upon the Lord will actually glorify the Lord.

You see, the Lord hears our many prayers and he's actually glorified by them. He's not annoyed by our many prayers. He's not deaf to them. He's not distracted like we so often are by other concerns. Brothers and sisters, whatever fears, grip your soul in the present, don't be so paralyzed by fear that you're inoculated by a spirit of prayerlessness. The one who powerfully delivers us is the one who also tenderly persuades us that he can be trusted. The one who lavishes grace upon grace upon us in the present and the one we should turn to regularly and meet with.

He's the God who's pleased to fellowship with us. Who walks with us as we make our journey through this life. I love the imagery that Revelations uses where it talks about Jesus’s walking among his lamp stands, his churches. The Lord promises that in whatever despair we encounter that he will satisfy us, satisfy us in the present with long life.

Now this final comment with long life I will satisfy him isn't, of course, a bare promise that that we as Christians will undoubtedly live beyond the average life expectancy of the average adult in the Western Hemisphere or anything like that. It is a promise that however many days the Lord gives us on this Earth, whether we die young or whether we die old, that we will be satisfied in those years so long as there are years that are lived in fellowship and communion with the Lord.

It continues to be the case friends that we live in a world that's hostile, or at least at odds with a kingdom of God and her citizens. These verses remind us that in Christ, we belong to a different kingdom. Our citizenship is of a heavenly city without deadly pestilence or war. In the present, though, we sojourn on this earth with many of those things constantly in view, we have an embassy of our true home here in the church. Here we have access to the king of that city while we await his triumphal procession to take us home.

Application

So what should we take away from all this? Well, to leave us with something, let me leave us with this. Friends, know the God who delivers this church, know the God who delivers his church. When I say know, I actually mean that in two senses. On the one hand, know what the Bible says about God. You know, one of the unfortunate misconceptions out there that I think we maybe regularly encounter is that doctrine isn't practical. You know, sometimes we hear people rattle off theological terms and our eyes glaze over because theology, we imagine, is something that's relatively unimportant for living our lives. Now, of course, we always need to strive to explain ourselves when we use theological terms, but I'd argue that there's no more practical thing out there than what we confess about the deep things of God.

As I mentioned earlier, what we believe about God in our heart of hearts affects everything. So what do you really, in the depths of your soul believe about God? Be honest with yourself, are those beliefs informed by experience? Are they informed just because somebody a long time told you that was the case? Or do they arise out of an exhaustive wrestling with the word of God?

On the other hand, it's not enough to simply work out an exhaustive confession of God if this isn't also the God you love. If this isn't also the God who gets to shape your being in this world. If this God isn't, as the psalmist puts it, my God. So, in short to know, God also implies that you know him personally as your God. That he really is the shelter under whose wings you dwell. That he really is the one who will protect you, even if following him cost you your very life. That he really is able to satisfy you in the present.

So know what the scriptures say about this God, how he loves you in Christ, how he's able to preserve and satisfy his people. Also know this God as your God by embracing his son, Jesus Christ for your salvation. Friends, that's our only hope, but is a truly satisfying hope in this world.

Pray with me. Gracious, Heavenly Father, Lord, you call yourself in our passage, the Almighty One, the One who is Most High, the Lord, one who is a suitable refuge in fortress, mid toil and tribulation. Lord, there's so much that's confessed in this psalm about who you are. I pray that as we continue to interact with your scriptures for the rest of our service today, but also beyond today, in the future and in our own personal lives as well, Lord, that we would really sit on these things. That we would meditate on these truths of who you are and that it would take root in our hearts and continuously shape the way that we walk in this world. Lord you promise to be our refuge and our fortress and I pray that that that we would trust in you to be that for us. Father, we pray that if anybody here hasn't embraced Jesus Christ as their Lord, that they would do that this morning. I pray for those who have, that you would continue to grow them, sanctify them in these many and great truths that we confess this morning. Lord, as we prepare as your church to come to the table and to taste and see with our other senses that you are indeed good, I pray that you would nourish us in the same gospel truths that we heard confessed in your past in this passage this morning. We ask all this in Christ's matchless name. Amen.