It's a pleasure to be with you this morning and be able to open the word of God to you. I know I've had good fellowship with Brent and with others of you here. Brent's been hanging out some on late Thursday nights after his book study at our Geneva Institute time. We have a study right on the internet, so if you are home by 9 o'clock from wherever you happen to be, just pop into our website. You can listen in or join in if you'd like. We discuss all kinds of biblical topics and we certainly welcome to have you join with us there. That's currently what I'm engaged in working on. Our church down in Pinellas Park has completed its 53 years and the church had its last worship service at the end of June. So that's why I'm free. And it was amazing in God's providence how things worked out that I was here today. I was talking with Brent and telling him a little bit about our church closing and all. And he said he happened to bring up something totally separate. He said that he was having trouble finding someone to fill the pulpit while he was going to be away on certain dates. And I said, well, what do you know? I said, I will I will be away. I will not be preaching on those dates. And he asked me if I'd be available. And I said, well, circumstances worked out. Yes. And little did we know of all the providential circumstances that would arise today with his being hospitalized and such. So I assure you, when that message came across my email, I sent that out to the Grace Prayer Network, which is all the people that we've been in communication with and brand as much in our prayers to. Let's turn to the Lord for a word of prayer as we approach his word. Our father, we come to that. word that you have given us. We come to study it, to learn from it, to be challenged by it, to be changed by it. And, O Lord, we pray that by the work of your Spirit that you will use this word powerfully in our lives to help us to be stronger and to be more loving and obedient children to you and to rejoice in the many blessings you promise us. For we thank you in the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen. One of my favorite psalms of comfort is Psalm 91. In God's providence, that's the psalm I prepared for my sermon text for October 4th, 1992. I finished writing that psalm, the sermon based on that psalm, edited it, printed it out on Friday afternoon because That next morning, Saturday, I had a meeting with the board of directors for the pregnancy center. And so it was all done by Friday in my little folder and ready to go for Sunday morning. And so I got up, went to the board meeting. My son was off at work. My daughter had stayed overnight with a friend and that left my wife, Lois, home alone doing some housecleaning. It was then that our lives were totally disrupted by a massive tornado that ripped through our neighborhood. It flattened homes, tore down poles and trees, and it crushed our house. Some of the walls caved in, roof was gone, our garage. We never did know where that went. Lois was inside the house all alone when this was happening. And when I got the call after lunch at the board meeting, I had to go and pick Lois up at the hospital emergency room. And then we went and I took her to my parents' house. My dad and I went down and picked over the rubble of what was left of our house, our belongings, and trying to decide at that point, where do we go from here? Well, I didn't appreciate the appropriateness of the sermon I had written and finished the day before until I got it out to look it over that night. When I got up to the pulpit on Sunday morning at our church, I had this beautiful psalm of comfort that not only spoke to me, but helped a whole congregation suffering with the idea that their pastor had just lost his home. Lois's wife had been in the hospital, was injured, and we were all somewhat disorganized from it all, not to say the least of our little cat, too. We had a cat that we hadn't seen. I thought for sure that was the last of the cat, you know, after everything. But when I went and looked through it, I looked under our bed and there was the cat claws dug deeply into the carpet. I had to pry it loose and the thing didn't come out and walk around much for days after that, but pretty soon survived the whole thing. One of my earliest childhood memories was of my grandmother who lived downstairs from us in Buffalo where I grew up. And I remember when I was very, very young, really, really young, one of my vague memories, you know, you have little pictures in your head of things before you really know even how old you were when you had those experiences. But I remember sitting on her lap, on her rocker, going back and forth, and she would hum little tunes to me. I really don't even remember what the tunes were. But I remember how nice that was to sit on her lap, be held there and be rocked back and forth while she hummed to me. The comfort didn't come from the tunes or from the rocker. It came from the love and security that I sensed in those arms that held me. Now, children love to be held and comforted by their parents and grandparents, and it reminds them that somebody is there to watch over them, somebody who's older. Somebody who knows what to do when things aren't right. And you feel that confidence in the arms of someone who loves you as children of God. We have our heavenly father who has promised us security and peace and care in the shelter of his arms. And with God as our refuge, we're never alone, no matter what we face, even when things seem completely overwhelming to us. And at times they do. Psalm 91 is a psalm of comfort. It's a promise of security to God's people, and it divides into sections by the person who's speaking and the people who are addressed in it. First, right at the very beginning, the psalm gives us the theme written as a proverb, just as a statement. Then he makes his own personal confession of trust in the Lord. where he speaks in the first person, then most of the psalm is instruction about God's protection. And then it ends with God himself speaking, where he gives us his words of promise directly from the mouth of our Creator and Redeemer. And so verse one is a statement, a very assuring fact. It says, He that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. I know we all perhaps have a place in our heads where we like to go to get away from our problems, kind of a peaceful place that we can imagine, wherever that might be. And probably if we went around and asked everybody, it would be a different kind of a place where you like to kind of go to get away from it all and to find some peace. Sometimes we hang pictures of serene scenes around or listen to soothing music. We might escape to a video game or watch TV shows or put on a movie or read a book Go to the beach, maybe time for a vacation. But those are only ways to get our minds off the problem. They don't deal with the problem. They don't protect us from the challenges and dangers. But there is a place where we can go, a secure place, a shadow where we can be truly protected from the dangers. The word here in this verse translated secret place or shelter is the Hebrew word Sator. The word satyr literally means a covering or hiding place, a secret shelter where you can kind of get away, where danger won't find you and won't be able to touch you. That's the basic meaning of the word. When storms rage and the rain pours down or thieves or gangs might be roaming out on the streets, we're all thankful for shelters, for our homes. And somebody invented locks. And we're thankful for our security systems that we might have, and maybe for telephones close by to get on if we have a problem. And I know what it's like here in Florida when the sun starts beating down real hard on a Saturday afternoon or whatever. We're really glad to have a place of shade where we can get away, or maybe a pool to dive in or something, or the air conditioner to turn on to get away from the heat of the sun. But the shelter in this psalm, the protecting shadow it's talking about, isn't really just a place. It's a person. It's our God, and he's called the Most High. The Hebrew name for God here is Elion, and it means that he's the highest that there is. It's a superlative. No one's higher. There's no one with more authority in all the universe. He's the king of all kings and the Lord over all lords, the absolute sovereign ruler over all the heavens and the earth. That's the one who's our shelter. He's in charge of everything. Don't you like that when you get on the telephone and you call somebody for help and they say, well, one moment, please, will I transfer you to another department? Pretty soon after you've been transferred to several departments and gone through many of those push the button menus, you finally get to somebody with the authority to speak with. And they might say, oh, well, I'm sorry, that's not really our department. And so they transfer you to somebody else with authority in that area. When you come to the Lord God, there is no one above him. He, your heavenly father, is in charge of everything. And so the Lord, our God, is the one who is Elion. And then it calls him the Almighty, Shaddai is the Hebrew word there. Nobody's stronger. He's the strongest of any, not just a little bit stronger. He's infinitely stronger. Nothing in all the universe or everything else all put together. to measure up to the strength of your God, the one you can call on, the one who's there to help you. And he's able to do anything, all his holy will as our creator and preserver. And his words are comforting because of who says them. These are the unfailing promises of the most high of the almighty God. But something you notice in this song, this protection and security isn't promised to everybody. There's no promise that everybody is going to find security and hope in the Lord God. In fact, the Bible shows that there will be many who will not have comfort and assurance from him. So who is it? Who is the one in this psalm who finds this hope in the Lord our God? It's those who dwell in who abide in God's care. So if you don't trust in him, your fears have nothing solid to rest in. And if you want this security, if you want this promise in God's loving grip, then the first and most important thing you have to do is to make your salvation sure. Make sure as you examine your heart that you understand that Jesus is the one who is the promised Messiah, the one promised way back in the Garden of Eden. Hinted at all through the law and the prophets and the one who actually was born. in Bethlehem and taught the people in Jerusalem and all through Judea. He's the one who came as the Lamb of God to die on the cross of Calvary in the place of his children and there to pay in full your whole debt. All guilt paid for in him. So we're called to come to him repentantly, to admit our unworthiness and to put our trust in him, to abide in the most high, to rest in him, to let him be our shelter. We don't need to build shelters of our reputation or our money or how people think we're great or we've accomplished all the stuff on our list in life. Our security, our hope is not in anything that we do, but when we rest in the shelter of the Lord, our God, and we find our home in him. Now, the next verse, the psalm writer makes his own confession of trust in Jehovah. Verse two, he said, I will say to the Lord, he is my refuge in my fortress, my God, in him I trust. And so here the speaker is the writer himself, and he's making this theme very personal now, and he's addressing his covenant God, that word translated Lord in the version I read is the Hebrew word Yahweh or Jehovah as it comes over into English. It's his covenant name, the name associated with the promise that he made that he will be a God to his people. He's not going to leave you alone. He won't abandon you no matter what's going on. He is there because he has promised that it would be so. Now, if you watch animals when danger comes along, they have some good lessons for us in the verses that he's talking about. where he talks about a refuge and a fortress and so on. We think of animals sometimes and how they find shelter. If you ever watch birds getting chased by cats or dogs or maybe excited children who want to catch them or pet them or whatever, you know, what do birds do? They don't fall down and cry and get all panicked and, you know, go into some kind of a depression state or something. They don't fret. They don't just give up and let the dog bite them or whatever. They fly away very calmly and they rest off in a tree or a high fence or something where the danger is gone. They're out of reach of the danger. And, you know, I love to go to the beach. That's one of my places of serenity where I like to take my books and go there and read and study and think and get in some exercise. And the one beach I used to go to is way, way off all by itself. I didn't see another human from the time I left my car to the time I got back for the whole morning. I love to go to those remote places. And I had to walk along this long path through all the mangroves, crossing little streams and through the sea oats and so forth. And as I walked along the sand path and you get close to the beach, there were all these little fiddler crabs. And at first I didn't know what they were, but you hear this hissing sound. And what it is, is all the fiddler crabs scurrying to get in their holes as I was coming along. They didn't sit there and wait to get stepped on. They didn't say, oh, no, somebody's coming down the path. And I'm sure predators had run down that path a lot, too, and eat them. Fiddler crabs, I guess, were kind of tasty if you could catch one. They went in their holes. They knew where the safety was. They just went down the holes. And as I came along, there was nothing there. You see them in the distance kind of all zipping off into their little holes of protection. When things threaten us in our lives, we're fools to just sit there and worry and fret about it, cry or get depressed. We have a refuge. We have a fortress in times of trouble. The Most High, the Almighty God, calls us, come, come to Him. Trust in His promises and in His power. And He'll take care of you, no matter what it is you're facing. And the main part of the psalm, verses 3 to 13, help us understand this comfort a little bit more, goes into more detail about it. Verse 3, it says, Surely he shall deliver thee from the snare of the fowler, from the noisome pestilence. Of course, this isn't talking about literal traps and pestilence. It's not a promise here that you won't get hurt if you step into a bear trap, so don't try that if you read the psalm. It doesn't mean you won't get a disease or suffer from a plague. It's about how God delivers His people from the traps of deceit and from the plagues of error. It's His Word and Holy Spirit that are there to deliver us. They help us to be delivered from the lies that distort God's promises that make us think they don't really apply to us. They get us all worried, maybe, that I don't qualify as if you had to begin with. It's all by grace, remember. And then there are the false teachers who present a different savior, not the resurrected one that we know as the powerful Lord Jesus Christ, who lives and is there for you every day. But they picture him as some martyr or kind teacher, but not as the Lord God himself. But we have his word that tells us the truth and his spirit that seals it on our heart. You know, even the best made shelters that people can put together are vulnerable. You get a good category five hurricane or tornado, as we found out, earthquakes, cruise missiles, nuclear weapons. I remember back in the 50s when the They would have the air raids in the schools, and they were saying, what if an atomic bomb was dropped on your school? We're hiding under our desks with our hands over the back of our necks. Yeah, a lot of good that's going to do. But there's nothing that's really going to protect us that we can make. But we here have God's promise that when all of these temporary things fail, when we know we can't do it ourselves, There's one thing that can't be taken away, that can't be penetrated as our shield, the arms of our God. They still shelter us. And so when all the spiritual attacks come along and, you know, when all the spiritual defenses need to be called upon, we're fools not to go to where the shelter is or to think we're going to find it somewhere else. God, in his word, tells us we have a security that cannot fail. There's no other protection. from the attack of sin and temptation. There's absolutely no other vaccine against the plague of errors that can attack your heart when falsehood tries to get in. Our hope is explained in God's word and it's applied by our trust in that grace of God through the power of his spirit. In verse four, it says, He shall cover thee with his feathers and under his wings shalt thou trust. His truth shall be thy shield and buckler. Of course, it's absurd to picture that God actually has feathers and wings. Obviously, these words are all figurative here. God doesn't have a body, much less wings and feathers. That would be something rather insecure compared to what God really is as our spirit being who is infinite, eternal and unchangeable in all of his being and wisdom and power, holiness and justice and goodness and truth. That is our God. But the Lord has used symbolism here that goes way back to Moses. In the book of Deuteronomy, verse 32, 11, it says, Like an eagle that stirs up its nest, that flutters over its young, spreading out its wings, catching them, bearing them on its pinions. The Most High, you see, protects us just like an eagle protecting its young with strong wings. I'm not going to mess with an eagle if it's protecting its young in a nest. And that's the imagery that God calls up here. I will protect you. Under the shelter of my wings. And so our almighty is that shelter from what frightens us. Verses five and six. It says, Thou shalt not be afraid of the terror by night nor the arrow that flyeth by day, nor the pestilence that walketh in darkness, nor the destruction that wasteth at noonday. There is just no sane reason to fear the terrors that can come to us in the darkness of the night or to be afraid of arrows that might be shot at you during the day. You know that just for a moment flashed in my mind a wonderful quotation from Stonewall Jackson, one of the great generals in American history, he and Robert Louis Dabney, who was a great Presbyterian pastor who served as his first lieutenant and chaplain to the troops. One day they asked him why he was so unafraid when people were shooting at him. He'd just stand up there looking over the battlefield and Dabney would stand next to him and they'd be watching out over what was going on, directing the troops, bullets were flying this way and that way. And they asked him why he wasn't afraid. That's how he got the name Stonewall. You know, he wasn't afraid of anything. And he just said, well, God controls every bullet. So no matter where I am, He knows where I am and He knows where the bullets are going. So he wasn't afraid. He knew his job. He was to stand there and look over the battlefield and take care of the safety of his troops. And it was God's job to direct the bullets, he said. Quite an amazing thing. Not afraid of the arrows that might fly by the day. It says even the pestilence is not afraid of something we should be afraid of at night. The diseases that come unseen and unsuspected can't separate us from God's love, no matter what you do go through. And you will go through hard times. Nothing can separate you from the real shelter of your soul. There's a lot of healthy people out there who never had an injury, who are miserable. And yet, as a pastor, I visited many people in hospital beds who've gone through surgery and who are on the verge of death. who found that peace and joy in the Lord and they were perfectly confident right where they were. The shelter from the real danger isn't found in never having any problems. It's in knowing the shelter to which we go when we face them. But of course, sometimes things all come in bunches. They get overwhelming. Thousands of people around us having trouble and we think we're next. Look at verses 7 through 10 in Psalm 91. He says, A thousand shall fall at thy side and ten thousand at thy right hand, but it shall not come nigh thee. Only with thine eyes shalt thou behold and see the reward of the wicked, 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. I've often talked about the principle of clumping. A clumping might not sound like a high mathematical term to you, but I use it in reference to statistical things, which you get for working in the math department for a while. You see, things don't just happen one at a time. If you had a handful of quarters and you threw them up in the air and let what we call chance take over, they're not going to fall down on the floor evenly spaced out in all heads or tails. They're going to be all clumped together, you see. Some will be even resting on one another. And we call this chance because we have no clue as to all the physics that's involved in how each individual coin is going to fall. But each one, following actually the air currents and its polar gravity and the resistance of the air as it spins, the way it let go of our hand and how each little force vector was on it. It's going to determine how it's going to come up. It's so beyond us. We say it happened by chance, purely random. But in God's mind, he knows every movement. He knows every motion. And so when all the events come in our life, they're going to clump together at times. Us, we just can't understand it. How come this is happening to me? All these things happening at once. You know, you're struggling with a cold and the hot water heater starts leaking. You go out in your car and it breaks down and then you get a cell phone call that you've got guests who are about to come and visit you and stay with you for a week and they're 10 minutes away. Everything seems to pave in at once sometimes. Sometimes serious tragedies all fall in us at once, too. And so what we can't predict and can't understand why it all comes together. We understand that in the mind of God, He knows very, very well. And why does he allow these things to all clump together in our lives? Because it's then that we specially appreciate how much we need to rely on God's care and his promises. And so as many fall around us, when all the feeble things of the world look like they can't protect us anymore and our security seems to go away, pounding at us in clumps, the world has no comfort, but we have our rest in the Lord, our God. All the mounting calamities can't really discourage those who abide in the Lord God. Nothing can shake the dwelling place of the Most High. And so God sends his messengers, verses 11 to 13, he says, he gives his angels charge over thee to keep thee in all thy ways. They shall bear thee up in his hands, lest thou dash thy foot against a stone. Thou shalt tread upon the lion and adder, the young lion and the dragon shalt thou trample underfoot. And so he sends his messengers, spirit messengers, human messengers to care for us and watch over us. And even if you step on evil beasts, there's victory. Again, he's not talking about actually going around and, you know, stepping on lions and snakes, but he's using terminology that's well attested in scripture. Satan is called what? The roaring lion out searching for to get us. He's called that old serpent in the Garden of Eden. And through all this cascade of attacks that fall on us, we're safe, we're secure and victorious in Christ. And that's how the psalm ends. These last three verses, God speaking for himself. It says, because he has set his love upon me, therefore, will I deliver him against God speaking. 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 will I satisfy him and show him my salvation. And so this is the Lord, our God, speaking. And he tells us what marks out those that God protects, those chosen and redeemed by grace. First, he delivers those who love the Lord, their God. If we've been redeemed, we love God so much we want to live for him. If you don't have a love for God or a desire to live for him, you need to pray that the Lord will change your heart and be sure you're resting in him. and in nothing else. And the Lord secures those who know the name of God, not just know his name. Anybody can memorize a word. That's not what it's talking about here. The name of God are all these names used in scripture that describe his nature, his wonderful attributes. You who rest in what God is in his glorious nature, have confidence and certainty that can't be shaken. He's the one who's your God and nothing is greater than him. And it says he answers the prayers of those who call upon him. Call on him. Actually do it. Don't just think about it. Call on him in prayer. Reach out to him in the depths of your heart. Go to that retreat, the very presence of God who's with you everywhere. But we enter into that through the blood of Christ, confident in him alone, simply coming to our father, asking for help. So it is. that the Lord gives us this great, great promise of protection and he rescues and honors and grants satisfaction, the whole of life and eternal salvation to those who rest in him. When children wake up in the middle of the night and they hear noises they can't identify, maybe they had a scary dream, they see shadows or things moving. Certainly there's a monster in the closet or under the bed or something. And they cry out for mom and dad. Mom and dad come running, bleary eyed in the middle of the night, trying to comfort that poor child that everything's OK and they may turn on the light and disperse the shadows. They can show them there's no monsters there. Whatever it may be, it's not that that really comforts the child. It's when mom and dad are there to call and when mom and dad come and when they can sit there feel comforted with those arms around them, knowing that everything's OK and that they're in the arms of someone who can protect them. And that's the way it is with the child of God. Satan knows your weaknesses. He knows your fallen nature. He knows how to push your buttons, every single one of you. And that's why you're going to mess up at times. You're going to think, oh, it's all my fault. I've messed up. The Lord must not love me anymore. Believe me, he knew you were going to do it. long before you did. And the Lord sent the Lord Jesus Christ to die on that cross for that very sin that was so bad. When you're His child, you can come to Him with great confidence. He's going to be there for you. Don't let all the deceptions and the dark shadows fool you. Our enemy and our weak souls throw up shadows Tries to get our mind off on discouraging things. All the threats and losses make us scramble to deal with things that come our way. And our imaginations get the best of us. We think the worst of other people's motives. Worst case scenarios create the monsters under our bed. But God is our refuge. And when we're pounded by one challenge after another, the disappointments that come, fear. We need to be reminded that there is a shelter. in the most high, the shadow of the Almighty. And we have a refuge, a fortress, arms there to comfort us and keep us. A father who is Lord over all, and there's nothing too hard for him, and a savior who already paid the debt. You're set free from your guilt and bondage to that old master of sin. There's no greater promise, no greater security. We need nothing more. God is our refuge. Come to Him anytime, all the time, and be comforted. Let's pray.