40 Minutes In The Old Testament - Psalm 46 Live from HWSS (Episode 439)

Episode Date: November 4, 2024

Enjoy this live recording from HWSS 2024 where Chad, Daniel, and Erick go over Psalm 46. Have a listen. Show Notes: ·       HWSS NWA ·       Support 1517 Podcast Network ·       1517 Podcasts ·       1517 on Youtube ·       1517 Podcast Network on Apple Podcasts ·       1517 Events Schedule ·       1517 Academy - Free Theological Education   What's New from 1517: ·       Broken Bonds: A Novel of the Reformation, Book 1 of 2 by Amy Mantravadi ·       Junk Drawer Jesus By Matt Popovits ·       Listen to 1517 Executive Director Scott Keith and Magnus Persson on the latest Re:Formera podcast ·       Signup For Free Advent Church Resources for 2024 ·       Clothed with Christ by Brian William Thomas   More from the hosts: ·       Daniel Emery Price ·       Chad Bird

1517 presents our 2024 free Advent resources, entitled His Gospel is Peace, the Advent of Christ and the End of Fear. This will include an Advent and Christmas sermon series for pastors to use midweek or on Sundays, along with other helpful resources for congregations. We've also created a personal devotional for every day of the 2024 Advent season, written by 1517 contributors. His Gospel is Peace is available as a free download. Sign up today to get access. welcome to 40 minutes in the old testament 40 minutes in the old testament is a 1517 podcast Network podcast. You can go to 1517.org slash podcast and check out all the other podcasts that are living over there, of course. Don't register for here. We still stand because it's

sold out, but you are already here. So congratulations on that. Glad that you are here. We are going to look over Psalm 46. Some time ago, Chad and I were like, hey, we're going to start doing two episodes a week and we're going to release Psalms. And we haven't done that very well because it's just it's just a lot i have a lot of podcasts to edit and so uh but that's gonna kick back up but we're gonna knock one out today so when we get to this one chad we'll just skip on by and then receive a lot of emails about why'd you skip that podcast and then have to reply to those emails about oh it's this live recording go look at it uh so psalm 46 chad what are we looking at well we're looking at uh i mean i so i chose this one for a number of reasons

Number one, maybe not number one, but close to number one, is because what hymn is in the background of Psalm 46? I mean, what hymn was inspired by Psalm 46? The Mighty Fortress. Yeah. And there's a few Lutherans in the room, right? And even if you're not a Lutheran, you probably know The Mighty Fortress. So I thought, number one, it's a 1570 conference. Yeah.

Psalm 46. I mean, it just makes sense. And number two, this conference is about the church. And Psalm 46 has a lot to say about life in the church. so that's the two reasons i suggested suggested this one plus it's just a cool psalm yeah so uh yeah we're gonna we're gonna dive into it it's not very long it's only uh 11 verses you think we can fill up 40 minutes with 11 verses can we pull that we've done it in the past done it in the past we can do it again so uh this is if you know about the psalms the book of psalms you know

that there's five different parts to it just like the books of the torah so this is in the second book and uh like a lot of these psalms at least the beginning of book two it is by the sons of korah so that's uh kind of in the the clump of psalms that it's part of and then it says it is according to alamote and dan's going to explain what that means dan go for it yeah uh well it's it's like if you had a psalm that you but you wanted ice cream on top of it yeah i knew you we're going there it's when you it's when you read it when you sing a psalm but you also eat ice cream yes that's a psalm a la moat yeah that's what i think that it's actually the ancient hebrew meaning of that word it's connected with ice cream now nobody knows what that means it's just a it's

just a word that at one point meant something to the people who put this together it's a musical notation so that's all we're going to say about that but that's all in the heading we're going to i'm going to read through the psalm itself uh beginning with the first verse and then we'll go back and we'll pull it apart, see what we can learn about the church and especially about Christ. God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore, we will not fear, though the earth gives way and though the mountains be moved into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains tremble at its swelling. There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy habitation of the Most High. God is in the

midst of her. She shall not be moved. God will help her when morning dawns. The nations rage. The kingdoms totter. He utters his voice. The earth melts. The Lord of hosts is with us. The God of Jacob is our fortress. Come, behold the works of the Lord, how he has brought desolations on the earth. He makes wars cease to the end of the earth. He breaks the bow and shatters the spear and burns the chariots with fire. Be still and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations.

I will be exalted in the earth. The Lord of hosts is with us. the god of jacob is our fortress and i don't know if there's anything else we need to say now a well-known psalm of course you know most people know at least i'd say half of the psalms you kind of recognize that this one is certainly well known and for good reasons because it just it's full of memorable images. It's certainly full of very gracious promises. And like I mentioned just a few minutes ago, it has found its way into our hymnody through a mighty fortress. So it starts out here with God, which is always a good place to begin. I don't

know if this was intentional or not, but I did do a little bit of math. Math is not my strong suit, but I can count. I can still do that. And guess how many occurrences of God are in this psalm? Of course. I don't know if you knew that or if you just guessed, but seven. Yeah. Obviously, you got to have seven references to God in here, but that's the way it starts out. God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. The Hebrew is kind of weird there. so it's like a helper in times of trouble he is found to be greatly yeah yeah or you can even the sense of uh he's he's a well-proven he's got a track record of being a refuge and a source of strength to us in in times of trouble that's good news that is good news yeah it is very good news

because uh i don't know about all of you but i've had times of trouble in my life i mean probably most of you have not experienced that, but if it ever comes along, let me, let me, let me guarantee you that if you're looking for a refuge and strength in those times of trouble, then God is always going to be there during those times of, of trial and struggle. Yeah. I love the constancy of the language here, uh, because it indicates that number one, we are, we are always going to have times of trouble in this life. And yet throughout all those times of trouble, he is with us and he will never leave us nor forsake us to dip into the new testament a little bit yeah yeah yeah the uh i love the the image behind the hebrew word that occurs a lot of times in the

psalms especially but other places too it's the idea of it's kind of like our word stress or distress it's the idea you're you're kind of being pressured you know the walls are closing in you're in a narrow space and that's kind of the image behind this hebrew word for for trouble which i light because i mean we all experience this you know the ceiling's coming down the walls are closing in where we don't know where to turn so where do you go when you're stressed when you're compressed when you're distressed when you're in this narrow place well it turns out there is a source of refuge and strength for us and it's always god during during those times and this isn't just when trouble is brought to us by other people but this also applies when we might be the

source of our own trouble as well yeah i mean like it often is even when we're faithless yeah like it often is in dan's life like it often is in the life of israel that's for sure yes this is true i think that i do think that it's good that if if something is like well proven to be true it should go without saying like so you just know this but what is also true is that so i i kind of read this this way, where you have the psalmist say, God is our refuge and our strength, a very present help or well-proven help in times of trouble. In times of trouble, you will try, first and foremost, to find help somewhere else. You'll try to find a refuge somewhere else, right? Yeah. And he starts this psalm, I think, by reminding that there is someone who has proven

themselves to be the place that you go in times of trouble even though it's not the first place you think of going you sometimes it's the last place it's like the last after you've exhausted everything else uh i guess i guess i'll go i guess i'll go with god on this and uh and i think that's part of what he's doing here is there's like this calling to remembrance that uh god has proven himself over and over again to be the safest place for you in times of trouble um so maybe So many of the psalms are, too. So many of the psalms are calling the people to remember the good deeds of God on their behalf. Yeah.

Constantly going back. Remember what he's done. Remember. That's still true. Well, if you have the people of Israel and they're in times of trouble, they might be trying all kinds of different things like we might do to try to fix it or to solve these problems or to deliver ourselves. And it seems like they're saying, hey, just remember who we are

And who we are are people who have God as our refuge and our strength. And you need to remember that as we go through times of trouble. Yeah. And the times of trouble here are described as the verses go on to, I mean, these are kind of cataclysmic kind of events that are described here. So this is, you know, our very present help in times of trouble, like when we get a cold. You know, this is not what he's talking about.

Because we go on in verse 2, therefore first of all we're not going to be afraid we will not fear even though and here we have this kind of cataclysmic events described the earth is giving away hurricanes like flame was talking about the mountains are moved into the heart of the sea its waters are roaring and foaming and the mountains are trembling at its swelling i mean this is uh this is some crazy stuff that's going on now there's a couple different ways we can read this number one we can read this as simply kind of, and this is typical of the Psalms, actually typical of the Old Testament, where you take something and you make it hyperbolic. You exaggerate it in order to

create the impression of things are really falling apart, either the nation of Israel or your own life or whatever it might be. So you often will have hyperbolic, exaggerated language in the Psalms. That's characteristic of poetry in general. And that might be part of what's going on here. so even though you know creation itself is coming undone we're not going to be afraid so that might be going on but there's another pretty strong argument that the way the psalm works is it first of all says okay god's our source of of refuge and strength so don't be afraid even though a happens and a is described in the language of creation with mountains and seas especially stability and chaos kind of pride and disorderliness you have the mountains and

seas kind of representing those two extremes so it's described that way but then after a couple more verses down in verse uh six and seven you have the nations brought in and here is where your translations god love them can sometimes not do the best job because they'll switch words in English, which in Hebrew are exactly the same. So just kind of jump ahead. When it says that though the mountains be moved and though its waters roar. Now, the word for roar, its waters roaring, is the same word that's used in verse 6 for the nations raging. Same Hebrew word. So the waters are roaring in verse 3, the nations are raging in verse 6. obviously different english words same hebrew word and then this idea of the mountains being

moved into the heart of the sea that's translated as totter in verse six where the kingdom's totter so we have the same two hebrew words occurring in verses two and three and then in five and six to describe the seas and the mountains and then the peoples or the nations they're translated differently, but obviously when the sons of Korah wrote this psalm, they wanted us to connect these things together, and they want us to connect them because all throughout the Old Testament, the seas raging and all the chaos of the waters or the storms, that is emblematic of the non-Israelite world. So the Israelites saw themselves as those who are on stable ground, and the seas were the emblems of the nations where god isn't ruling where there's just chaos where everything is

like genesis 1 2 tohu vavohu where it's formlessness and void so either you have maybe both of these where you have creation coming undone and then the nations also coming undone or creation coming undone is actually just a poetic way of describing what's happening among among the nations either way whether you go a b or it's all describing the same thing what's happening from the israelite perspective all around them is everything is falling apart yeah there's threats galore uh turbulence danger everything based upon what you see and experience indicates that man i don't know where to turn because everywhere i look things are falling apart and that's when the good news comes in yeah this uh this reminds me the imagery here

It reminds me a lot of the book of Revelation, obviously, because you have all this cataclysmic imagery that you use there. And it also reminds me of the fact that this kind of thing actually does happen periodically throughout history all the time. There has been volcanoes that have caused the whole world around them to just kind of fall apart. I mean, where for years crops won't grow and people are dying of famine and all sorts of things. This has happened all throughout history. And of course, when we look at the history of the Old Testament, we know that the nations were always roaring and the kingdoms were tottering. And that, you know, this was a constant problem for the people of God.

And it still is true for us today. I mean, we don't have any reason to believe or be certain that everything is going to be fine even later today. It's not guaranteed to us. And so really, the times of trouble are all the times. And God is our very present help now, and he's our very present help even if the world starts to explode. He's always there. And therefore, we will not fear. Because we know that no matter how much instability there is out there,

whether it's in our own personal lives or family lives or congregational lives or our national lives or just the life of creation in general, one thing that's always stable, the one thing that never changes is not just who God is in his existence, but who he is for you. So God never wakes up in the morning and has to decide whether he's going to love you or not. It's a constant. He never finishes the day regretting that he loves you and forgives you. That's the constant that's there, is that when he sees you, there's never a bit of hesitation as to whether he's for you or not that's just part of his very nature in christ is that he's always on your side he's always for you always loves you he's always ready and willing and joyful

to forgive you so that stability is the only rock that is strong enough to build our lives because we know that it's always going to be there worse they do with fear um sometimes i like when i read like in the old testament or new and you hear this like don't be afraid i mean jesus says all the time like don't be afraid and you're like okay uh and like or don't be anxious and you're like thanks all right solved yeah since you if you say so uh and this happens in the psalms of two and you have this like okay so we have this very well proven um help in times of trouble and so like we're therefore we're not going to be afraid but i think i think that you could take that be like okay well i am a little bit afraid or i do get afraid i think

it's more like if um so years ago uh all like we like had a tornado that was uh well we had one recently too but this story is from years ago we had like tornadoes and we like lost power and stuff and um and my daughter was afraid uh i was a little bit afraid but i'd not as not as much afraid i've been through these before and uh and we lost power and i was taking her out of her room like we were gonna all go into the living room and i told her don't be afraid i was like don't be afraid uh now sometimes when you tell someone uh we therefore we will not be afraid or there's nothing to be afraid of you're acknowledging the fear that is there yeah right uh and i'm telling her like hey i got you don't be afraid because i'm with you so i got you know me i'm not going

to let anything bad happen to you so you don't need to be afraid and and the psalms do this a lot too i think where they're acknowledging that the fear is there and instead it's it's not saying like and if you're afraid therefore you don't believe this is evidence it's more that uh because you do have this well-proven help in times of trouble there's something you can look to in times of fear that uh that is not so much that going to like make you altogether not afraid but actually acknowledges that there is a there is a fear is a real thing but when you are afraid that this is what you look to right that's simply that hey we have god therefore don't be afraid of anything uh it's not that you have god so when you are afraid look to him yeah yeah yeah and then

so that's 18 minutes though and we've only gone through like three verses you want to you might want to start moving progress so i i love i've always loved uh this transition between verse three and four because given everything we've talked about with mountains falling into the heart of sea and everything roaring and foaming and seemingly falling apart uh the transition to what comes next is not what you would expect yeah because we go from these roaring seas and mountains tumbling and all of that to talking about a little river yeah there is a river this is our source of our hope there's a there's a river whose streams make glad the city of god the holy habitation of the most high and of course the holy habitation most high every years

that was on a mountain right that's where god's at so you have mountains falling apart in the opening of this and you have oceans and seas and all of this and then we transition what's our hope found on what's where do we turn in times of fear well there's a river and it makes us very happy makes us joyful because it's connected with the holy habitation of the most high now the river imagery in connection with the dwelling of god of course that spans the entire scriptures you start out with that in genesis one and two where you have god's habitation in eden and what flows out of eden yeah of course a river flows out of eden and then it goes into its different four different ways and then that's picked up in ezekiel chapter 47 where in this vision he has of the eschatological

temple there is just a trickle at first right coming from the side of the temple and he follows it along and it gets deeper and deeper and deeper and these waters finally are so deep that he has to get out of it he'd have to swim if he stayed in it and then these rivers are carrying this river is carrying the presence of god the healing presence of god so much so that when it reaches the what the bible calls the salt sea we call it the dead sea the bible calls it the salt sea that when it gets there it heals the waters yeah it desalinates them so you go from genesis to ezekiel and then of course to bring up revelation again you get to the end of revelation and here you have once more the new jerusalem coming down out of heaven just like ezekiel saw

and there's a river yeah the river of the water of life and there's trees of life growing everywhere well all of this in connection with psalm 46 is describing the same reality where god is where the holy habitation the most high is whether it's in eden or whether it's in the new jerusalem or whether it's the temple that ezekiel saw or whether it is in conformity with the theme of the conference the church there's water there's a river and it flows not just from the presence of god but it carries god himself his gifts his healing wherever it flows and that makes glad the city of god because that connects us through this saving liquid presence of god which we would say is baptism uh connects us to christ yeah so it gives us that joy and the source of this river of life

if you go to john 4 14 where jesus is talking to the one at the well is jesus himself yeah yes he is the water of life flows from him and then john in revelation picks up on that because he says there is no temple and then he also says well there is a temple except it's it's the father and the sun yeah they are the temple and so the water is flowing from them and then if you really wanted to go crazy you could go to later in john's gospel of course where you have the spear roman spear hitting the side and what comes out water water from the side of the temple show this temple in three days i will rebuild it the temple is christ's body and all of a sudden wow you see genesis and and ezekiel and revelation all coming alive in this one image of a spear piercing the

side of jesus and there comes the water of life out of him this is a lot of verses and a very long way of saying that there is a baptism that makes glad the city of god that's what i digest there is a baptism the baptism the only baptism um that yes makes glad the city of god uh god is like you're gonna hear about this tonight if you come to my talk uh which you are of course but uh But God is really happy with baptism. He thinks it was a great idea. So you should do that if you haven't, and do that to your kids, too, if you haven't. That would be a great idea.

Baptize them babies. Baptize yo babies. Mm-hmm. Yes. Anything else you want to say about verse 4? Not 23 minutes in. Hey, we're doing good. this is all planned and paced it's good uh what about this holy adaptation most high what sets

it apart oh yeah verse five guess who's there god god is in the midst of her she shall not be moved that's the same word that we had back in verse two where the mountains are moved in the heart of the sea falling apart live the church yes long live the church she shall not be moved now this is this might be a bit unsettling when you look at the life of the church because it does seem like the life of the church from the life of the our perspective the church has moved quite frequently yeah and not always in good directions uh-huh yeah not always moving where we want the church to move yeah but this is uh this is talking about the the bride of christ it's talking about the reality of the one for whom christ gave up his very life in order that she might be his own

yeah and so she shall not be moved and not because the church is so strong and she's really got her act together and she understands the way things should be no it's all because of her connection to the bridegroom yeah to christ himself i just uh going back to this uh psalm being so influential to the writing of the mighty uh mighty fortress um when you look at the imagery here you can't help but think about uh that time period and it must have felt like that for the beginning of the reformation like where literally the nations are raging the kingdoms are tottering i mean everything seems to be completely spinning out of control and yet god is faithful again to his church the church must have looked like it was in great peril and yet ultimately she was not moved

is it chesterton who talks about how uh when the church feels like she's just gone and dead and in the grave that that's fine because she worships the lord who knows his way out of the grave yes yeah yeah everlasting man yes i yeah i just i love the imagery there and it fits with this whole idea well it's fine so everything's falling apart it's all right it's all right because christ is the same yesterday today and forever feels like the church has just lost her ever-living mind that's okay because turns out her bridegroom has not and all our confidence is in him and not in not the church literally cannot die no it's an impossibility yeah yeah yeah i mean even the gates of hades cannot withstand the attack of the church that's it okay so god's in her midst she

should not be moved god will help her when morning dawns i thought that's an interesting phrase so i did a little search in the hebrew on that turns out it only occurs in about three places in the old testament once here once in the book of judges in one of those scenes that we don't even want to talk about but the the first occurrence is actually in exodus 14 when israel is trapped the red sea god has sent the the wind to part the waters and it says when morning dawned same hebrew phrase then all of a sudden you see a way parted for israel who's been trapped probably scared to death thought this is the end all of a sudden when morning dawns god helps her it it does feel like the psalmist when writing this is maybe meditating on that chapter of exodus because

there's other places here where he uses very similar language to the narrative found in exodus 14 yeah yeah i i think he's probably uh reflecting upon the the creation we talked about the those verses but then also the exodus because this has that whole exodus feel especially the sea and everything happening with it god will help her morning morning dawn so another exodus kind of event then we switch okay we talked about mountains we talked about seas and now we're going to bring in verse in verse six the nations the peoples that are often symbolized by these turbulent waters. The nations, what do they do? Well, they rage. And again, that's the same verb in Hebrew as the waters roaring. The kingdoms totter. In other words, the kingdoms move. That's our same

Hebrew word we've seen a couple of times. The kingdoms move, the nations rage. He utters his voice and the earth melts. God just simply speaks. That's all it is. When I read this, I was thinking of Jesus with his disciples on the boat. You know, you could storm on the Sea of Galilee appropriately. And Jesus just basically stands up and says, Shut up! And everything shuts up. He utters his voice, and there's calm.

There's peace. Well, of course, he's the creator in the flesh. So his word carries that kind of power and authority. Or when the soldiers come to arrest him, and he says it is I, and they... Yeah, they all fall back. it says i am but yeah yeah i go with me yeah i am yeah down they go nuance yeah and then we have uh in verse seven i'm still moving no no i'm good i'm good we're good we're good all right we're

getting there i'm saving it oh you guys so uh verse seven and verse 11 are the same the lord of hosts is with us the god of jacob is our is our fortress now there's like all kinds of good stuff in here. First of all, in Hebrew, the Lord of Hosts is Yahweh Sabaoth, which is usually translated either Lord of Hosts or Lord of Armies. It's a military imagery here. And the Septuagint in the Greek translation was translated consistently as Pantokrator, which if any of you know the Orthodox tradition, that's the major icon that you will see. It's usually the upper half of Jesus' body. See, is it his left hand he's holding the New Testament and his right hand is raised in blessing that's the panto krator which means like the the lord the lord of all now uh what luther

did with this in the mighty fortress is perfect uh so here we have the lord of well who is this who's the lord of host hmm let's see who might that be well you get to i don't know if it stands at two or three in a mighty fortress but it goes uh with the might of ours cannot be done soon were a loss effected but for us fights the valiant one whom god himself elected ask ye who is this jesus christ it is who of sabbath lord lord of sabbath so who's the lord of sabbath that we're singing about in a mighty fortress jesus christ it is the elect one of god the one who is on the battlefield for us. This is, I mean, it's all over, of course, Luther's writings. It's all over that podcast, 40 Minutes of the Old Testament, too, where it turns out that the Lord of hosts who's

with us is none other than Jesus Christ. Yeah, he is, he's Yahweh Sabaoth. He's the one who's with us always. And the with us in Hebrew is the same part of the Hebrew expression uh emmanuel so he's with us god so you kind of have both here he's jesus christ is yahweh sadly oath he's the lord of hosts and he's emmanuel he's he's with us and then you have the second line which is kind of surprising it's not what i would expected the the second line of this of this verse to read maybe something like i don't know god almighty is behind us or whatever but it says the god of jacob is our is our fortress that occurs i think i my notes here i can check it about 30 times in the old testament he's referred to as the as the god of jacob

and i was sitting there just kind of thinking over that i thought oh this is actually it's actually perfect because when you think about the lord of hosts you always have a oath you think in terms, I think in terms of power, right? Yeah. It might, you know, he's omnipotent. And then you switch and you think of the God of that scheming, backstabbing, no good, unlikable patriarch, Jacob, the God of Jacob, the God of that guy who's so much like all of us. he's our he's our fortress so uh you have omnipotence in the lord of hosts and you have uh something like omni love omni agape in the god of jacob he's he's both he's all powerful which is great i mean having all power for god that's awesome doesn't doesn't do you any good

if he doesn't care about you yeah but the fact that he actually cares about you that he uh to kind of piggyback off what Kelsey and Flame are just talking about. He elected you in Christ. He elected, chose Jacob. That's great news. He's our grace-filled fortress. Well, you've got to pick a patriarch that really needs a fortress.

You can't be like, the God of Samson is our fortress. Did he really need one? Yeah. We've got plenty of time, people. Don't be anxious. Don't be anxious.

come he says behold the works of the lord who has brought desolations on the earth okay what has he done well he makes wars to take a sabbath the word cease there is shabbat which is the word the verb from whence we get our noun sabbath so he makes wars take a sabbath stop cease to the end of the earth he breaks the bow and shatters a spear and he burns the chariots with fire again revelation imagery uh this you know beating your swords into plowshares kind of thing i mean this is uh both an already and not yet reality you know when we're when we're thinking about how god interacts in the world and what he ultimately will do in creating the city of god for his people in the last days yeah and it picks up on the imagery too of uh of isaiah 2 where you have

the mountain of the house of the lord being established as the chief of the mountains and all the peoples all the nations are going to are going to stream in this anti-gravitational sort of way they're going to stream upward to it yeah and uh they'll say come let us let us learn of the torah of the lord and they're going to do what they're going to beat their swords into plowshares and they're they're uh they're spears into pruning hooks they're going to transform weapons of warfare into implements of agriculture this transition back to this eden kind of kind of life so all of these characteristics of violence and fallenness in the world and bloodshed and all of that they're gonna be broken shattered burned because a time of peace has come

this time of peace that's established ultimately by christ himself being broken and shattered and becoming the one who actually is receiving the weapons receiving that which is violence done to his own person in order that he can bring about this kingdom of kingdom of peace well it is weird too because you if you're you're talking about all that and you're like wait a minute i thought i was beholding desolations like did the you know you have come let's check out these works of the lord look at all this desolation on the earth and you're like okay that and then and then you're like oh this is a wonderful thing here we're gonna have peace and all that stuff but the truth is is that uh before you get you know uh peace on earth and all the wars cease the way this does end is

like it's all got to be burned up all right so like so what you're what you're really hoping for is like hey come nuke it all and then recreate it right so you have the new heavens and the new earth are followed by the desolation of the earth and but uh this is this is the wonderful thing when that happens you know something really great is about to happen yeah yeah well there is no resurrection without death right so there is no new creation without the destruction of of the old this is the way our lord works yeah now we're going to the verse everybody knows right be still and know that i'm god now here's something kind of cool about this verse this you can have two different addresses of this verse you can either have and this is typically the way that it's

preached and taught and i've done this myself where god is talking to us right chill that's the the new chad translation chill it's just it's the idea is just drop it right relax be still stop whatever you're doing just it's okay just relax be still so and and there's nothing wrong with that i mean that is god's address to us quit doing so much quit quit trying to raise your hands and fix your situation because you're probably just going to mess it up even worse so just be still stop like at the red sea when god tells moses who's not even talking by the way he's like hush yeah i got this why are you still talking so that's one possibility and it works the other possibility actually and i kind of like this too is that god is addressing the nations

he's like shut up stop be still and know that i am god you nations not just israel but you nations so either i mean both of these are true right god is talking to us but he's also talking about the world be still drop it and know that i am god i will be exalted among the nations i will be exalted in the earth and then it wraps up with the uh final repetition of what we saw in verse seven the lord of hosts is with us the god of jacob is our is our fortress i'm going back to that exodus 14 passage one of the reasons i i feel like the psalmist could be meditating on it is because the language is so similar here, especially with, you know, being still. You know, the people are brought to the edge of the Red Sea. The Egyptians are catching up on them. They're

obviously and understandably terrified. They can't see a way through. They can't see a way out. And yet God speaks through Moses to the people and says, fear not, stand firm and see the salvation of the Lord, which he will work for you today. For the Egyptians whom you see today, you shall never see again and then it ends with this word the lord will fight for you and you have only to be silent what a great what a great lesson for uh for the church to learn too yeah just preach i feel like we got that one knocked we're good yeah just preach the gospel and let god do his work yeah yeah quit trying to do god's job for him uh first of all you're not qualified secondly you'll mess it up even if you try just do what he's giving you to do and the result will be

what psalm 46 is talking about where there's fear there's going to be tranquility and peace where there's chaos all around there's going to be assurance that god is our fortress he's our refuge he's our he's our strength and so we can drop it we can be still and know that we're not God. He is. And because of that, then we know that he's with us. We know that he's always going to be our mighty fortress. Yeah. Well, this psalm is bookended with two things. I mean, the psalmist starts by saying, hey, just remember, in times of trouble, you have this well-proven refuge and strength. You have God. And at the end, God says, that's right, I am. So stop it. That's how it goes. you can be still

just stop trying to help me save you and that's how it starts and that's how it ends and that's how we end because we are out of time thank you guys for hanging out with us Stinky Fellows is going to be up next so let no one go anywhere

thank you very much We'll see you next time.