A thousand may fall at your side, and ten thousand at your right hand, but it shall not come near you. Only with your eyes shall you look and see the reward of the wicked. Because you have made the Lord, who is my refuge, even the Most High your dwelling place, no evil shall befall you, nor shall any plague come near your dwelling. For he shall give his angels charge over you, to keep you in all your ways. In their hands they shall bear you up, lest you dash your foot against a stone. You shall tread upon the lion and the cobra, the young lion and the serpent. You shall trample underfoot. Because he has set his love upon me, therefore I will deliver him. I will set him on high, because he has known my name. He shall call upon me, and I will answer him. I will be with him in trouble. I will deliver him and honor him. With long life, I will satisfy him and show him my salvation. Thus ends the reading of God's word. Please be seated. This psalm is quite extraordinary. As we're reading through it, you might have even been tempted to doubt the veracity of its words. Doubt the promises that are given there, because they are so extraordinary. Think about what God is promising us in this psalm. Over and over again, He's saying He will protect us, He will shield us in the most dangerous things that could come about. Some of these images are images of battle, of warfare. Some of them are the images of a plague, a pestilence. And he says in all these things he will be our shield and our defender. He talks about serpents, picking up serpents, trampling on serpents, cobras, lions. Who wants to meet a lion? And thinks that they would be safe in doing so. But he says, in all those things, when the arrow flies by day, pestilence at night, destruction surrounds you, a thousand people fall on the other, 10,000 on the other side, death surrounding you in every way. And he says, but I will be a shield to you. I will protect you. I will defend you. In Spurgeon's commentary on this psalm, he tells about the year 1854. He was in London, and I gather from the story that he was pretty newly there. He'd only been there about a year preaching, and the neighborhood that he was preaching in, the parish area he was preaching in, was visited with cholera, Asiatic cholera disease. Every day, pretty much he says, every day he would be called to the bedside of somebody who was dying. And several times a week he would have to do funerals for those who perished in this plague. And he said he would look and he would see friends falling one by one by one. And all around him was death surrounding him. And he said he was working hard, working long hours, and then he started to feel sick himself. You know, you see lots of sick people around you and you start to say, oh no, I think I'm getting it too. You feel that maybe I'm getting this plague as well. And as he was returning home from a funeral, he passed the store of a shoemaker. And in the shoemaker's window, there was a little trade announcement, he thought. He thought, oh, he must be selling something. But he looked closely. He says, that's not a trade announcement. That's not an advertisement. But in these bold handwriting on this piece of paper on the shoemaker's window, it said these words. Because thou hast made the Lord, which is my refuge, even the most high thy habitation, there shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling. Someone had posted that on their business in the midst of the plague. And he says this, the effect upon my heart was immediate. Faith appropriated this passage as her own. In other words, he believed those words. I felt secure, refreshed, and girt with immortality. I went on with my visitation of the dying in a calm and a peaceful spirit. I felt no fear of evil, and I suffered no harm. It's an extraordinary testimony to a man who believes just straight out what the Word of God says. Says it, I've got a duty to visit the sick. I've got a duty to do these funerals of those who died from this plague. And as I do my duty, I have confidence that God will be my shield and my refuge and my defender. Extraordinary promises here in this psalm. And notice the promises are given to whom they're given. Look at verse 1 and 2. Who are these promises given to? To he who dwells in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. I will save the Lord. He is my refuge and my fortress, my God, in Him I will trust. This one who has these promises dwells in the secret place of the Most High. It's a person who's communing with the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. He's in communion with God. He abides under the shadow of the Almighty. And later on, he's going to speak about being under his wings, the wings of the cherubim. If you look at verse 4, He shall cover you with his feathers, and under his wings you shall take refuge. Now the picture here is, I believe, a picture of the secret place. The holy place. The holy of holies. Because in the holy place of the tabernacle or of the temple, you have the cherubim. And their wings are outspread. That's the secret place. If you dwell in that secret place, you're under the shadow of the Almighty. You are protected by His wings. He stretches out His wings over you and nothing will harm you. There's a sense in which you are all here immortal. Every one of you is immortal. While you dwell in the secret place of the Most High, nothing can touch you. You can't be killed. That's a crazy thing to think about, but you're immortal. And that's what Pastor Spurgeon is talking about. He says, I'm going to do my duty, and as long as I am in the secret place of the Most High, He is going to protect me. And he lived courageously because he believed that. Notice the title of the sermon is A Call to Courage. And I think this psalm calls us to courage, but it doesn't just call us to courage. It gives us great reason to be courageous in very dangerous situations. Whether plague, whether battle, wherever God might take us, if we dwell in the secret place of the Most High, He will be our shield. He will be our refuge and our defender. Surely He shall deliver you from the snare of the fowler. Look at verse 3. So in verse 3, the snare of the fowler. This is some kind of threat that you don't see. You know what a snare is, right? So birds would be trapped in these snares and birds are pretty clever sometimes and they can spot the snare. So you have to hide the snare. You have to make it look like food or put it in some place where they won't see it. And then it snares you. Well, the devil has set all kinds of snares for us all over the place. There's snares in this culture everywhere. Everywhere you turn, young people, there are people who would like to snare you and draw you in and trap you. Same truth for us as adults as well. They seek to snare us. But, he says, if we will hide ourselves in the secret place of the Most High, He shall deliver you from the snare of the fowler. It won't catch you. It won't trap you if you would dwell in the secret place of the Most High. No matter how skillful the deceiver is, you'll see through it. And it won't catch you. And then in verse four, we already looked at, he covers you with feathers, wings take refuge. His truth shall be your shield and buckler. Battle imagery, it's warfare imagery. So in the midst of battle, you need a shield. As your enemy comes against you, you can see him coming on you, and you have a shield to defend yourself from his sword and from his spear. But in this case, who's your shield? God is your shield. He is the one who shall be your shield, and nothing's going to get past him. Now in your own personal shield, you could put it in the wrong place at the wrong time and something could get through and get you. But not here because God is your shield. He will be your shield and buckler. Now, there's all kinds of terrors. Most of us, at one point in our lives, have been afraid of the dark. Maybe some of you were more courageous than me. But dark places are scary places. You can't see what's around you. You don't know what's in there. And it's especially scary if you're hearing noises in the dark, right? If you're laying there in the dark and then you hear something in the closet. or something under the bed. So there is this terror at night that makes everything worse. I used to backpack on the Appalachian Trail. And you're not supposed to go alone, but I did. And so I would get out there sometimes, and it gets really dark out there. And it just gets sort of scary. And you want to snuggle up a little bit closer to the fire because you want to get towards the light where you can see more. You'll hear something in the woods out there and so you grab your flashlight and you want light. You want light. You don't want the night. You want light to be able to see what is out there. So there are all kinds of terrors that get worse by night. But he says, you shall not be afraid. So much of our lives we're terrorized not by the evils that surround us or the things that can harm us. We're terrorized by our own fear. We just become afraid. And that terror or that fear does more damage to us than any threat out there in the woods. And there were really no threats in the woods when I was backpacking like that. There were no creatures out there probably that were going to eat me or harm me. Nothing wanted to come near that fire. But the terror, the fear itself was a torment to me, to be there afraid. But he says, if you dwell in that secret place, if you're hiding yourself in the triune God, you shall not be afraid of the terror by night, nor of the arrow that flies by day. Arrow is one that comes from a distance, right? In battle, If you see an enemy coming towards you with a spear or a sword, you can see him approaching, you're ready for him, you're ready to engage. But the arrow, it flies from a distance and you just don't see it coming. You might see in the movies, you see him going over like that. But in the midst of battle, it can come from any place and that arrow, that random arrow, like the one that killed Ahab, remember? Just sticks him right in the one place in his armor where he has no defense. He says, you don't need to be afraid of that, the arrow that flies by day. In verses 6-8, he talks about the pestilence. The pestilence that walks in darkness, nor of the destruction that lays waste at noonday. A thousand may fall at your side. I think this is about the pestilence. I mean, that's not exactly what Spurgeon was experiencing, but there were, you know, several funerals a week, several people dying, going to the bedside of those who were lying there in their last hours. And He says, you don't need to be afraid of the pestilence that walks in darkness, nor of the destruction that lays waste at noonday. A thousand may fall at your side, ten thousand at your right hand, but it shall not come near you. Only with your eyes shall you look and see the reward of the wicked. So this is an astounding promise. This plague will not come near you. We have many plagues in the Bible, pestilences that come as we belong, as judgments of God often. They're often judgments of God. Tens of thousands of people are wiped out. But the Lord goes through before the pestilence strikes. And He marks on His forehead like in Ezekiel. He marks on the forehead of those who are His, those who dwell in the secret place of Mosiah and says, it shall not come near you. It shall not come near your house. And God is their defense and they don't have to be afraid of these terrors at midnight or the pestilence that walks in darkness. These are extraordinary promises. And he goes on, Because you have made the Lord, who is my refuge, even the Most High, your dwelling place. Why will He protect you in the midst of pestilence? Why will He protect you in the midst of battle? Why will He do these things? Because you have made the Lord, Yahweh, who is my refuge, even the Most High, your dwelling place. No evil shall befall you, nor shall any plague come near your dwelling." That was the promise that that shoemaker in London was claiming. I've made the Lord my refuge. I've hidden myself in Him. I will not be afraid. He goes on to say he shall give angels charge over you. Look at verse 11, for he shall give his angels charge over you. Not one angel, plural, angels. You may have heard that you have guardian angels, that people have a guardian angel. You don't just get one, you get plural. plural angels are watching out for you. If you hide yourself and take your refuge in the Most High God, He gives His angels charge over you to keep you in all your ways. Verse 11, to keep you in all of your ways. Now these are radical promises, so radical that it's hard for us to believe that God would really do this for us if we would dwell in the secret place of the Most High. We have to take this by faith. We have to appropriate it, like Spurgeon said, by faith and find courage from it. I will trust the Lord to do this as I go about all my ways. He says, to keep you in all your ways. There was a confederate general named Stonewall Jackson, you're probably familiar with him if you're from around here, you've heard of that guy. Stonewall Jackson. And he was asked by a captain how he could be so courageous in battle, because the man had no fear in battle. He would go into battle and he was not afraid of bullets flying all around him, he would march out in the front and do his duty. There's one story from the Mexican, I think it was, I can't remember which battle, I think it was the Mexican. I might mess my history up here, so don't quote me on that. Anyway, he's in the midst of battle, and they had been run off a hilltop. He was an artilleryman. And his men and artillery had been run off the hilltop by just fire, sweeping the whole hilltop with fire, and they had to desert their cannon up on this hilltop. And so he realized, I have to get up there and get that cannon firing again. But they're just bullets just sweeping across that hilltop. And he realized at that moment, I'm going to trust God. and I'm going to do my duty. If he wants me to perish, I perish, but I have a duty. I am to defend this hill, I am to man that cannon, and I will man that cannon life or death." And so he went up there on that, bullets sweeping all around him, and he starts trying to get the cannon in position and started firing from that position. And while he's there, all his men are hiding in the ditch over here. You know, you would think those are the sensible ones, right? They're hiding in the ditch, the bullets are sweeping across this hilltop. And he said, as he got that cannon turned around, he said, he goes, come up here man, it's perfectly safe. And he says, that's the first time I ever knowingly lied. And right after he said that, a cannonball literally went between his legs. And he left. And so that's the kind of courage of Stonewall Jackson. That was before he was actually called Stonewall. But the captain asked him, he goes, how can you be so courageous in battle? How can you stand in the face of death without fear? I want to give you a quote from him, what he said about that. He said, Captain, my religious belief teaches me to feel as safe in battle as in my bed. God has fixed the time for my death. I do not concern myself about that. But to be always ready, no matter when it may overtake me. Captain, that is the way all men should live. And then all would be equally brave. That's what this psalm calls us to, a courage that does not fear death. Just be ready for it. The Lord can take any of us out at any moment, here, this day. There's no guarantee that any of us will make it to the end of the day. No promises. But our job is not to worry about the day of our death, not to worry about whether or not what's going to take us out. It's to live today for the glory of God with this confidence. I'm ready to meet my maker. I'm trusting in Christ alone. I have no confidence in myself. I'm trusting in Jesus. And if He takes me out, He takes me out. But I will do my duty this day. And if your duty calls you to a hilltop with a cannon, and to be firing that cannon, it doesn't matter how many bullets are sweeping across the top of it, you go and do your duty and you trust that He will be a shield and a buckler to you. He will be your refuge and your fortress. Whatever that duty is, He calls you to. You dwell in the secret place of the Most High. Take refuge in Him, and He will be your shield. So, in the psalm I want to continue on and look at verse 11. For He shall give His angels charge over you, to keep you in all your ways. And in their hands they shall bear you up, lest you dash your foot against the stone. Now this verse was preached to Jesus at a certain point. Turn in your Bible to Matthew chapter 4. These verses were spoken to Jesus in Matthew chapter 4 by an evil preacher. Matthew chapter 4. Begin in verse 5. The devil took Jesus into the holy city, set him on the pinnacle of the temple, and said to him, If you are the son of God, throw yourself down. For it is written, He shall give his angels charge over you, and in their hands they shall bear you up, lest you dash your foot against a stone. So there it is. The devil comes to the Lord Jesus to preach these verses to him. Gives him a particular application he ought to do. He's what you ought to do. Is you ought to get yourself up on the pentacle. You cast yourself down in some kind of miraculous stunt to get everybody to see you. And then you know what's going to happen. The angels have charge over you. That's what that song promises, right? Angels have charge over you. In their hands they shall bear you up. You're not going to hit the ground if you jump off that temple. You won't dash your foot against a stone. Nothing bad is going to come to you. Just jump. Look at Jesus' response. It is written again, you shall not tempt the Lord your God. Jesus, I do not believe, is speaking to the devil in the sense that he's saying, quit tempting me. I think he's speaking those words in this sense. If I did what you said, I would be tempting God. So all these magnificent promises that we have in this psalm are ours in Christ Jesus. They belong to us in Christ Jesus. They're all yes and amen, every bit of them. But they're also not to be used in a way like the devil is trying to tempt Jesus to use these promises. The devil is twisting them. And there's lots of things. Let me look at a few things about how the devil tempts us in this way. First of all, if you look at the previous verses, Jesus has been baptized back in chapter three. And you hear this voice come from heaven in chapter three, verse 17. He says, suddenly a voice came from heaven saying, this is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased. A few verses later, the devil took him up into the holy city. And verse six, if you are the son of God, See what he did? Very clear. Words came from heaven. This is my beloved son. The devil comes to Jesus and says, If you're the Son of God, that's the way He always works. He always wants to cast doubt on the words of God. That's what He did at the very beginning in the garden, remember? Did God say? Did He say that? If you're the Son of God, well, He is the Son of God. That's pronounced from heaven, but the devil wants to throw doubt on the word of God. And beware, that's one way He works. He always wants to make you say, I don't know if this is true. I'm not sure it's exactly what it says it says. And then he tempts Jesus to jump off the temple and have this extravagant show. Throw yourself down and God will protect you. And Jesus sees that as tempting God. It would be tempting God if he was to do such a thing. There was another saying of Stonewall Jackson. You know, after you read that account of Stonewall Jackson jumping up onto that hilltop to try to get that cannon in place. And there was another saying of his, and that was this, duty is mine, consequences are God's. So when God gives us these promises, He does not give them so that we can do spectacular things like jump off temples and be okay. Okay, that's testing God. But we can claim these promises when we're doing our duty. If He's given you a particular duty, He's called you to do something. If you're, as a minister of the gospel, if I'm called to the bedside of someone who's dying and they have a disease that could infect me, I'll go do my duty, like Spurgeon did, and trust the Lord to be my shield and buckler. That's what I'm supposed to do. And you all have duties too. You're doing one right now. You're gathering here to worship God. This is a duty. God has called you to worship Him, not to forsake the assembling of the saints together, as is the habit of some. And if you hear that there is a plague in the land, and you say, I can't go. It's too dangerous. I think you're not taking these promises seriously. Do your duty, whatever that duty may be. And think in these terms. You know all your different duties that you have. Do your duty, even if it involves life and death situations. Right now we're living in the midst of a pestilence. I don't think anybody's unaware of that, right? There's the COVID-19 pestilence. But do not let COVID-19 keep you from any of your duties. None of them. Not a one. You do your duty and you say, oh, I will dwell in the secret place of the Most High. I will take my refuge in Him and I'll go do that. He calls me to worship, I will worship. He calls me to bear witness to these people. He calls me to support my family. Whatever he calls you to do, do not let fear of pestilence or plague keep you from your duty. Or enemy bullets. Don't let them keep you from your duty either. Be courageous. It's a call to courage and faith in God. But there is a way that you could tempt God. And that's what the devil is doing to Jesus. I want to give you an example here in Tennessee. Here in Tennessee recently, I heard that a man was bitten by a rattlesnake in the midst of a service. Now that is like the preeminent way to tempt God by using this psalm. So go back to the psalm here. Let's turn back to Psalm 91. You may know of snake handlers. Hopefully none of you are such. I'm going to reprove you if you are a snake handler right now. Do not do that. But in this same psalm, it says that you shall tread upon the lion and the cobra, the young lion and the serpent you shall trample underfoot. And they say, yes, we can handle snakes. Let's gather a rattlesnake and let me show everybody how I'm handling a rattlesnake and how much faith I have. That's like jumping off the temple. That's not seeking to please God. That's listening to the devil's temptation to show off. That's pretty much what the devil is tempting Jesus to do, is to show off. Go jump off the temple. The Lord will protect you. Angels will keep you from dashing your foot against a stone. And the snake handlers are doing a very similar thing. So I tell you that to emphasize this. You're safe when you're doing your duty. Not when you're trying to show off, right? Not when you've gone outside your duty and you're tempting God. There is a line there. But if you have a duty to do, you do that work that God has called you to, and you trust Him to be your shield and your buckler. And if it takes you in the face of a young lion, you'll trample that lion underfoot. If it takes you into the place of a cobra, you will trample that cobra underfoot. Remember the story of the Apostle Paul gathering wood. for the fire. They've been shipwrecked and he gathers the wood for the fire and he's bringing it to the fire and a serpent comes out and latches onto his hand. And he shakes it off in the fire. And then all the natives are like, oh no. Let's watch, he's gonna die soon. And nothing happened. Nothing happened. In that case, that's a fulfillment of this promise to the apostle that he would be able to withstand the serpent or the cobra and would trample it underfoot. And nothing did happen to him. But he was in the midst of his duty. He wasn't handling snakes for entertainment or for some kind of showing off. But that's an incredible promise here. You shall tread upon the lion and the cobra, the young lion and the serpent you shall trample underfoot. And what does that remind us of? Trampling on a serpent. Ah, yes. All the way back at the beginning. Genesis chapter 3. God spoke to the serpent and said, there's a seed of the woman who's coming. A seed that will trample your head and you will bite its heel. but He will trample you on the head. And so that long promise back in Genesis 3.15 that God would send a promised son, a promised seed who would trample the head of the serpent. This psalm is fulfilled in Christ. He did trample the head of the serpent. There's an interesting thing here, a dynamic going on. When Jesus meets the devil in the wilderness, that isn't their first meeting. They'd spoken before. They spoke in the garden. And in that garden, Jesus says to the serpent, he will crush your head, and he will strike his heel. And here he comes along later, and that's a continuation of the conversation in Matthew chapter 4. The serpent's seeking to tempt the Son of God, and he thrusts away all his temptations and continues in obedience, trusting in the Most High. So we are not to be afraid of all these things that can threaten us. We live in a dangerous world. It's not a risk-free world. It's a very dangerous place. Any of us could die before nightfall. It's very possible. It reminds me of a story I was just reading to my children, the Chronicles of Narnia. We were reading the story of the horse and his boy. And as they're riding back to Narnia, they're being chased by a lion. Of course, it's Aslan, they don't know it, but they're being chased by a lion. And Erebus is on her horse riding as fast as she can, and the lion comes up and bares its claws and puts like five slashes across her back, bloody slashes across her back. They finally make it to the place of safety, this old hermit's house. And she's taken in and they're nursing her and tending to the wounds on her back. And the little, the little, the horse, I think it was, was it the horse? I can't remember, the horse was talking this story. So I think it was the horse. Yeah, the horse says, will she live? Is she gonna live? Because she's being tended to in bed. And the old hermit says, you know, in all my arts, I can't tell if any of us will live till nightfall. But as far as I can tell, looks like she'll live as long as any other girl her age. And so that's the case for all of us. We don't know if we'll live till nightfall, but we can't live in fear of that. We can't be afraid of that. We live courageously. We're called to courageously do our duty wherever it takes us, even if it takes us in the face of a young lion or a serpent, because we are trusting and resting in the one who loves us. And that's the confidence of the psalmist here in verse 14. Why does he have this confidence? Why is he so assured that God will protect him and defend him from plagues and pestilence and lions and serpents? Because he has set his love upon me. Therefore, I will deliver him. I will set him on high because he has known my name. He shall call upon me and I will answer him. I will be with him in trouble. I will deliver him and honor him. With long life, I will satisfy him and show him my salvation. This is our confidence, the promises of God. If you have set your love upon the Lord, he's going to deliver you. He's going to set you on high because you've known his name. You call on Him, He will be there to answer you and He will be with you in your trouble and He will deliver you and He will honor you, He even says. With long life He will satisfy you and show you His salvation. This is an awesome King we serve. He has set His love upon us. And the only reason He can do that, the only reason a righteous and holy God can set His love upon a bunch of sinners is because of the Lord Jesus. That's it. The only reason He looks on us with affection and love and delight is because of what Jesus the Christ has done for us. He lived that perfect life of obedience we read about. By His obedience, many will be made righteous. He died that perfect death on our behalf. And so as we trust in Christ, as we trust in Him and His life and His death and His obedience and all that He is, and we come to Him, then He will by no means cast us out. And I wanna just focus on that last promise there for a second from Jesus. Hear the words of the Lord Jesus. No matter how messed up your life has been, no matter how much sin continues to come back and haunt you and bite you, no matter what you've done, Jesus said, if you come to Him, He will by no means cast you out. So come to Him. Come to the secret place. He is the secret place. Abide in Him. And as you abide in Him, then you can have courage to go and be faithful in whatever callings you have, no matter what dangers it takes you into. And there's lots of dangers, I've thought of many. You know, to stand up in your work some places could mean that you get fired. To stand up in the public square and tell the truth could mean that you're cancelled. that you're hated, that you lose your job, that you lose your home. That's happened to Christians throughout the ages. When the Scripture tells us here that we are safe in Christ, when it tells us that the safest place in the world is in that communion with God, it's true. But that does not mean it can't be very hard there, in that safe place. But the safest place in the universe is to abide in the secret place of the Most High. That is where you will be safe. And when we sin and we leave the place, we're not in a safe place. We've gone into the dangerous territory. We left the castle. We're out there, right, vulnerable before the enemy. But if you have left the castle and you have become vulnerable, you can always come back. Jesus always will receive you if you come back. Whoever comes to me, he says, I will by no means cast out. By no means, nothing. If you will come to Him, He will not cast you out no matter what you've done. No matter how many times you have left the castle walls and gone outside. So hear that. He is our safe place. Come back to Him and abide in Him. And then go faithfully, be courageous in whatever things God calls you to do. So let's pray. Oh Lord, You are our refuge and our strength. And we do not put any confidence in ourselves. We do not have the strength to do anything in the flesh. But you, by the work of your Spirit, can enable us to trust in you. You can enable us to fellowship with you. To abide in the secret place. To abide in Christ. And then bear good fruit. For if we would only abide in the vine, we would become fruitful. So we pray you enable us by the power of your spirit to abide in the vine so that we could be fruitful in whatever dangers may come. Give us courage and help us to faithfully serve you in the midst of them. In Christ's name, Amen. Let us sing, I think it's a rendition of this psalm in the hymnal, hymn number 90, at least it's drawing on it significantly. So if you'll stand with me together and we'll sing hymn number 90.