Hello and welcome today to Trinity Sermons.
Here at Trinity we aim to share biblically based messages with you from our Sunday services
to challenge, encourage and inspire you as you go out into your lives.
Today we continue along in our Summer Sermon Series Summer Playlist and we read through
Psalm 91 and we are joined today by guest preacher Peter Blundell.
We hope that you enjoy the sermon and God bless.
Our reading today is Psalm 91.
Whoever dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty.
I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge and my fortress, my God in whom I trust.
Surely He will save you from the fowler's snare and from the deadly pestilence.
He will cover you with His feathers and under His wings you will find refuge.
His faithfulness will be your shield and rampart.
He will not fear the terror of the night, nor the arrow that flies by day, nor the pestilence
that stalks in the darkness, nor the plague that destroys at midday.
A thousand may fall at your side, ten thousand at your right hand, but it will not come near
you.
Only observe with your eyes and see the punishment of the wicked.
If you say the Lord is my refuge and you make the Most High your dwelling, no harm will
overtake you.
No disaster will come near your tent, for He will command His angels concerning you
to guard you in all your ways.
They will lift you up in their hands so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.
You will tread on the lion and the cobra.
You will trample the great lion and the serpent.
Because He loves me, says the Lord, I will rescue Him.
I will protect Him, for He acknowledges my name.
He will call on 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.
The word of the Lord.
Good morning.
My name is Peter.
Good to see you all.
Actually, now I can see you all.
Did you get one of these on the way in?
I hope you did because it will give you a clue when lunch is coming.
That's notes for this talk.
If you didn't, are there any spares of these?
You might find it helpful.
What would really be helpful, number one thing, could you have in a Bible, does Psalm 91,
did you have, do you have Bibles?
No, yeah, he's got, yeah, he's got a real Bible.
It'd be helpful.
I mean, I know some of you know it by heart.
It's one of those Psalms, but just in case, have it there because I'm going to refer to
it throughout.
If you want one of these, do we have any spares?
Waves going, maybe, I don't know.
I'll leave that with the wonderful folk here.
They'll figure it out.
Rochelle, thank you so much for that reading.
Appreciate that.
It's good to be back with you.
It's been a year since you let me through the doors near enough.
Let me pray for us before I go any further.
Heavenly Father, we've come, we've gathered as your children in this place for many reasons.
Primarily, we want to lift up the name of Jesus.
He's our Lord, our Savior, our Redeemer, our Friend.
We've come here to be with each other, but we've also come here to be with you.
We're your children.
You love us.
We ask now that you would speak to us through the Holy Spirit-inspired Scriptures.
We invite you to comfort us, particularly where we've been challenged, and we give you
permission to challenge us where we've all got a bit comfortable.
Help us to apply what we learn in our everyday lives.
We ask these things in the wonderful name of Jesus, and everyone said, amen.
A psychologist reflected this truth.
He said, you know, there are only two types of people in the world who are exempt from
having to deal with fear.
Okay, think about that.
Two types of people.
There are dead people and deranged people.
Okay, there's your two types.
The rest of us, and I'm hoping it's us, we're the ones who have to deal with the stuff.
Now there are various levels of it.
There's the small concerns of life.
Some of you just went through Canada Day family get together, and it was a bit stressful,
wasn't it, because of that one member of the family?
And if you don't know who that one member of the family was, it's you.
Okay, now you're worried about Thanksgiving, aren't you?
Some of you are concerned, you've been concerned about the US election, haven't you, and after
what happened yesterday?
Now you're very concerned.
Is that going to change things up here or down there or anywhere for better or for worse?
It affects the world, doesn't it?
And some of you, oh, my heart goes out to you.
Every September, your hopes go up.
Every March, April, May, they get dashed.
You're the leaf follower.
And every year you say to yourself, will the Leafs ever win the Stanley Cup again?
Sorry.
But there are more significant concerns, aren't there?
There are way more ones.
These ones, they weigh down on us.
They cause us sleepless nights.
They drain us of energy and hope.
You realize that the company is downsizing, and you think, well, is my job on the line?
It might not be, but it's that concern, isn't it?
You look at your child or grandchild and you know that they're struggling at school, but
you can't quite put your finger on it.
Why?
Why are they failing?
Why doesn't it work?
Or you look closer at hand at the issues in your marriage and family and you think, is
there any hope of reconciliation, restoration?
And then there are some fears that blindside us.
They overwhelm us.
The phone call with the news of the terminal illness.
The divorce papers in the mail.
The drowning in debt.
The actual job loss.
That's a reality, isn't it?
Now all of the Psalms, 150 of them, they're all inspired by God the Holy Spirit.
They're all wonderful, but some of them are especially rich and comforting in times of
fear and sickness and loneliness and trouble.
And Psalm 91 is one of those special Psalms.
Hundreds of millions of people have turned to this Psalm with thankfulness in the midst
of their calamities.
As we approach this Psalm, I want to share with you one of the lessons that I've been
learning over the years and recently in particular, and that is the importance of pronouns.
And that's particularly relevant in this Psalm.
And the first important pronoun, verse one, is whoever.
Whoever.
So if you buy a Bible open, have a look at verse one.
Whoever dwells in the shelter of the most high will rest in the shadow of the Almighty.
Now by intentionally using the third person impersonal, that's what the word whoever is,
the psalmist is addressing anyone who is seeking help in times of trouble.
In other words, you and me.
No exceptions.
So in this Psalm, what we're going to meet, we're going to meet this man and he is surrounded
by chaos and uncertainty.
But despite that, somehow he refused to fall into fear.
And the question I asked myself as I studied this Psalm was, how was he able to stand firm?
Because so many of us, we just get smacked and we fall over.
We're done.
And then I realized actually the answer is simple.
I like simple things.
I am a simple man.
I make no excuse about it.
I'm from the shallow end of the pool.
I like simple stuff.
This is what he did.
He made a decision and he stuck with it.
That was it.
He made a decision.
You've got to make sure it's the right decision.
And then he stuck with it.
What was his decision?
Well, we see it here.
He decided to worship and follow the most high and Almighty God.
That was his decision.
And because he made that decision, it then meant that he had to focus and he chose to
focus on the absolute authority and the awesome power of the creator.
And when he now shifted his focus of all this stuff that was chaotic around him onto the
most high God, then everything else got a perspective and it looked different.
The verb in this verse, to dwell, it has a sense of permanence.
It means to remain, to stay, to tarry, to lodge, to make your abode.
And it's reflected on by Jesus, the last night that Jesus spent with his disciples before
his arrest and crucifixion.
He's teaching them.
And in John chapter 15, verses seven through eight, Jesus said, you can identify my disciples
because they abide.
They dwell in me.
So as a branch dwells or abides in the vine, so those who follow Jesus Christ as Lord abide
and dwell and remain in Jesus.
And that is the New Testament equivalent of dwelling in the shelter of the most high.
So the wonderful reality is that God's presence always leads to his protection and his provision.
So do you see the order?
The presence of God leads to protection and provision.
So the first question now the psalmist is asking you and me, you can ignore the question
or you can engage with it, is a very simple one.
It's this, how big is your God?
That's the question he's actually posing.
And he's saying, I want to encourage you to worship and follow the most high almighty
God.
That's the challenge.
Is your God that big?
Because your response will determine your perspective.
And what that will mean is you'll either walk by faith because your eyes are on the most
high God or you'll walk in fear because they're not.
See the decision that the psalmist made affects what happens.
The second important pronouns, verse two, are my and I.
My and I.
So in response to God's presence, the psalmist then chose to declare his own faith.
He affirmed that his Lord is my refuge and my fortress.
Do you see how it's so personal this relationship?
He's not a secondhand faith.
He's not relying on somebody else.
This is mine.
We have a personal faith.
Christian, you follow Jesus Christ as your Lord.
You have a relationship with him as the most important one you have.
And that means that you're a daughter or a son of the father.
That is the greatest gift you can be given.
Live it out.
Stop living with a mentality of slavery which says that you're not that person.
Do you remember the story, the parable of the prodigal son?
I'm sure you all know it.
At what point did the son cease to be a son?
Never.
He acted.
He said, dad, I want you dead.
I want the money.
He acted really badly.
He considered himself, I'm not worthy to be called your son.
And when he comes face to face with his father again, he starts saying, I'm not worthy.
I want to be your servant, at least your servant gets a house and food.
And dad says, shut up.
He doesn't.
Okay, I know.
But he effectively says that, stop talking.
You're my son.
You never cease to be my son.
I love you.
And his perspective changed.
You have a relationship with the living God.
Live it out.
It's personal.
It's got to be personal.
And if you don't yet know Jesus as your Lord, I beg you, accept him, confess him as your
Lord.
It's the best thing you'll ever do.
He's confident in this relationship with his Lord.
He says, my God, in whom I trust, in whom I feel secure.
Wow.
Now, what you probably didn't see, because maybe you haven't read the Psalm in the Hebrew
for a while, is that that is a military term.
He's saying, God is my defense against all of my enemies.
I don't have to worry about those guys.
They've got to get through God to get to me.
And we're going to see that as a picture in a couple of minutes' time.
Now, the theme of this Psalm is clear.
We are not, we must never put our faith in an abstract entity.
Don't do that.
Our faith is in a person, in God himself and nothing less.
Now, this Psalm is built on ifs and thens.
If you do this, then that happens.
If you don't do this, then that can't happen.
So if, here's the first if thens, if we choose to dwell in Jesus, I'm putting this now in
New Testament terms, if Jesus Christ is your Lord, not your Savior, he's got to be Lord
before he becomes Savior.
Romans 10 verse 9, if you confess Jesus Christ is Lord and believe that he was raised from
the dead, then you will be saved.
Okay if he's just your Savior, you're not going to make him Lord.
You won't worship him.
Thank you very much.
I've got a ticket to heaven.
I'll go my own way.
Uh-uh, that's not a Christian.
It's Jesus Christ is Lord.
That's the statement of faith.
That's the non-negotiable.
That's how we live.
That's the only way to live.
The church has lost its way when it thinks we can worship Jesus as anything other than
Lord.
He is Lord.
And if we dwell in him that way, then, here's the then, here's the beauty of this, then
the promises give us security and victory.
Let me put it in the words of Psalm 91.
If we abide in Jesus, then he will be our shelter, our shadow, our refuge, and our fortress.
Hallelujah.
The third important pronoun is he.
Verses three to 13, he refers to the Lord God.
Verse three, surely he will save you.
And most of us know that one of the names of Jesus is Emmanuel, God with us.
We have a God who doesn't sit on a distant throne, tutting and throwing thunderbolts
and wishing he never created us.
We have a God who got intimately involved, came and lived amongst us, and cares about
the welfare of his people.
And God's care is revealed in this, I think, absolutely stunning picture in verse four.
It's a combination of pictures, two pictures in this, and I want you to revel in both.
The first picture is of a bird, a mother bird, a father bird, doesn't matter which, a parent
protecting you and me, covering us with the shelter of the wings.
I feel the softness of the down of the inside of that bird, the feathers, but we're inside,
a beautiful picture.
The second picture, though, is on the outside of the bird is hard, unyielding titanium armor.
That's the picture of verse four.
So we experience the loving embrace of a father, but all those who want to get to us have to
get through the titanium armor.
Good luck.
That's where we've got to be.
And then we read in verses five to six that this extraordinary protection of God extends
both day and night.
All 24 hours are covered, and we're given security from all natural and supernatural
fear, whether the fear is from evil people or war or deadly pestilence or disease.
There is no limit to his protection.
The reason is because God, our God, our God Almighty, the most high God, has full authority
over all things that happen in heaven and on earth.
Do you see why that first decision from the psalmist, how big is your card, affects everything
else?
Now this promise of God's care in verse seven is now expressed physically.
So we read that vast numbers of people are going to fall all around us, a thousand at
your side, 10,000 at your right hand.
But even then that happens, it, whatever it might be, and it might be plague or battle
or casualties or demonic attacks, you fill in the blank.
It shall not come near you.
So the protected person walks through this Holocaust of evil untouched.
Oh, they're aware of what's going on.
We're told in verse eight that they will see the wicked, the wicked of those who are hostile
enemies of God.
That's anyone who has not accepted Jesus Christ as Lord.
The wicked and the lawbreakers.
Jesus said, if you love me, you'll keep my commands.
John 14 verse 15, wicked people who don't love Jesus, they don't keep his commands.
There's going to be punishment.
Now I look at verse eight and I go like, whoa, time out for a second.
The promise that those who trust God will not suffer God's holy judgment against them
for their trespasses.
And I'm like, yeah, but hang on.
I goof up all the time.
I mean, my wife is not here for the service, but you only have to talk to her and she'll
tell you pretty quick that I'm a right mess.
So how can this extraordinary promise be made?
Well, it was made in the foreknowledge then, we can look back 2000 years to the cross.
It's made because Jesus paid in full for my sins and all of yours on that cross.
That's the wonderful gospel friends.
That's amazing, extraordinary grace.
So far in this psalm, we've seen in verse seven that we are promised individual protection.
It will not come near you.
We've seen, we're promised in verse eight, eternal protection.
We will not be punished for our sins.
And we see, we're promised in verse 11, miraculous protection with angels guarding us in all our
ways.
What an awesome God we serve who genuinely cares for his people.
The fourth important pronoun is you, verses three to 13.
Having stated his own personal faith in God, the psalmist now, he commends that faith to
others just as we should be doing to those who don't yet know Jesus Christ as Lord.
The most striking feature is that the word you here in the Hebrew is singular.
So it means that these truths are for every single individual.
And for you and for me, of course it's an if, if we truly trust an abiding God.
If we do that, that's when we discover that he is utterly faithful to what he's promised.
That he will be our shield from dangers and our rampart against enemies.
Please don't mishear me.
It doesn't mean that those who trust God never die from infectious diseases.
All right, don't mishear me.
It doesn't mean you won't suffer from an enemy plot.
Just a sidebar, you'll see the relevance I hope in a moment.
When God the Father created you and me, we're individually beautifully created, knit together
on our mother's womb, Psalm 139.
He made us in his image and he intentionally created us with needs.
It wasn't a mistake, it was intentional.
We are meant to have needs.
Needs that need to be met every single day.
That's how we were created.
It's the fear that those needs are not met that cause us to worry because we need these
things.
That's what Jesus is covering, for example, in the Sermon on the Mount.
That's why he says, and you'll read it in Matthew chapter 6, ask today for your daily
bread, your daily needs.
And he sums it up.
If you seek first my kingdom, all the things you need will be given to you.
So the Father created us with something that we all need.
We all therefore face the same choice.
Even Jesus did.
He was not exempt.
He was fully human.
The choice is this.
Will we trust the Father to provide for all our needs?
He has repeatedly promised that he will do that.
Or will we choose to live without the Father's provision?
And if we choose that latter course, if we say, no, I don't want anything to do with
the Father, those needs, they don't magically disappear.
That's why they're called needs.
We still have those needs.
In fact, the clever people say there are five S's.
I want to write down the five things that we all need.
Safety, security, self-worth, satisfaction, and status.
The five needs.
To put it in simple English, for one of those, we all need to put the food on the table and
gas in the car.
If we say no to the Father, we end up placing our trust in something or someone else.
This could be the government.
The government will now supply all that we need.
Or our bank balance, our trust in my money, or our reputation, or our contacts, or ourselves,
or whatever it might be.
But those things will never fulfill our needs.
They weren't designed to.
And ultimately, they always disappoint us and leave us empty inside.
Only the Father can meet all our needs.
Only the Lord Jesus and the power of the Holy Spirit can quench every thirst.
But we have to choose to want to come to Him.
To come back to the psalm, and there's a reason for that segue, we have to want to dwell in
the shelter of the Most High.
To state the obvious, a shelter will only protect those who get under it.
Okay?
You can carry your umbrella and it can start to rain, but if you don't put the umbrella
up and stand underneath it, you're going to get wet.
Oh no, genius.
That's what I'm saying.
Don't say I've got an umbrella if you don't use it.
Even if you have an umbrella, if you don't stand underneath it, even if you put it up,
put it up and stand underneath it.
This is what the psalmist is saying.
All of these wonderful promises in Psalm 91 are conditional upon this.
Let's do another if then.
Let's look at verse 9 if you have your Bible open.
If you make the Most High your dwelling, there's the if, then the result, verse 10 is no evil
will overtake you.
Why?
Because verses 11 through 14, God will command his angels to protect you.
So it's guaranteed, I'll make this guarantee to you, we will all experience suffering and
evil in this fallen world.
It's guaranteed that if we know the Lord, we will know his divine protection and guidance.
The question is, are you under his shelter?
The fifth important pronoun is the divine I, verses 14 through 16.
God delights in his relationship with the psalmist.
You see that in verse 14, because he loves me.
That just sets the Father's heart on fire.
It's the basis for everything.
It's obviously a reciprocal, a relationship we know from scripture that we love God because
he first loved us.
First John chapter 4, verse 19.
So before that psalmist love God, God loved him.
And the Lord was pleased to honor him.
And do you know the promise he gives to him right at the end of the psalm, verse 16, a
satisfying long life.
That by the way is very different from a long life.
God promises satisfaction.
I find it very curious that today many people, they want a long life, they even want to have
immortality and they don't know what to do with themselves on a rainy Saturday afternoon.
They're saying, verses 14 and 15 show us three things that bring joy to the Father's heart.
And things that are not too difficult for any Jesus follower in the power of the Spirit.
So these three things are not something we can say, oh I couldn't do that.
If Jesus is your Lord, you can do these three things.
I'm going to encourage you to do them.
Verse 14, the first one I've already mentioned, because he loves me.
We are to unashamedly express our love and our gratitude to the one who died in our place
on that cross.
Don't be ashamed of this.
Jesus, if you're ashamed of me, I'll be ashamed of you.
Instead let us just honestly say, Jesus I love you.
I love you Jesus.
I thank you for all that you did for me.
You didn't need to do any of it.
I deserve to spend an eternity in hell.
I still do.
But you loved me so much.
You hung on that cross.
You took my place.
Thank you.
I love you.
Second verse 14, because he acknowledges my name.
Jesus taught us to pray to the Father.
And you might remember the prayer, we're going to say it later on in the communion service.
He said, this is how you start your prayer.
You start Father.
Okay, you're a child.
Don't start a prayer with God.
Christians pray that prayer.
Don't do that.
Start Father.
Jesus, every single prayer that Jesus prayed began with Father except for one when he was
separated from God on the cross.
That's when he cried out, my God, my God.
You're a daughter of the Father.
Stop calling him God.
Call him Dad.
Abba, if you want to.
Heavenly Father, if you'd like to.
But whatever it is, say I'm your son.
You're my Father.
But he continued in that prayer, holy is your name.
The name denotes someone's character.
The greatest primary characteristic of our God is holy.
Did you know that?
One of the errors of the church is to make the primary characteristic of God love.
Oh, he is a loving God, don't get me wrong.
But his primary characteristic is holy.
And if we get those two mixed up, we have a problem in the church.
Isaiah chapter six, verse three, the seraphs around the throne room say three times, holy,
holy, holy is the Lord Almighty.
Never will you find love, love, love in the scriptures.
It means that God's love is a holy love.
That's really important to see.
And God's wrath is a holy wrath.
And God's jealousy is a holy jealousy.
And God's grace is a holy grace.
And God's mercy is a holy mercy.
And God's anger is a holy anger.
But it's always holy.
And thank God for that.
And that's why he says be holy because the Lord your God is holy.
Everything flows from that.
And so we are to acknowledge and we are to reverence and we are to honor the holiness
of our Lord.
And the extraordinary thing, and sometimes you have to shake your head and go, wow, could
this really be true?
Is that you and I have been called his children and been given permission to call on his name
with such intimacy.
Wow.
Such authority when we acknowledge the Lord and such power when the Spirit comes upon
us and we are in submission.
The third thing we can all do is this, verse 15, because he calls on me.
We're invited to call out the Lord in times of need to seek his way.
Three things expected from us.
But you know, friends, we can never out give God, can we?
To marvel with me at the extraordinary grace of our Lord who undeservedly gives to us
immeasurably more than we can ask or imagine.
Because in this extraordinary Psalm, we find the Lord's extravagant promises and he gives
us eight gifts.
Eight.
Look with the passage with me.
This is the important pronoun I.
Verse 14, I will rescue you.
Verse 14, I will protect you.
Verse 15, I will answer you.
Verse 15, I will be with you in trouble.
Verse 15, I will deliver you.
Verse 15, I will honor you.
Verse 16, I will satisfy you with long life.
And verse 16, I will show you my salvation.
Hallelujah.
Our God is so faithful to us.
We will know his presence, his power, his protection, and his provision that in a nutshell
is salvation.
And that's where I should finish, isn't it?
I mean, you should be going, yeah.
But as I said at the last service, actually I found myself saying something similar the
last time I was preaching here, a completely different passage.
There are some of you here who do not read that Psalm this way.
Some of you are annoyed and frustrated by this Psalm.
It's actually infuriating.
Because as you read it and as I've just preached it, you're going like, that's a fairy tale.
That's got a very nice bow at the end of it and a happy ever after.
And you're going like, thanks a lot, May, but what about suffering?
What about martyrs?
What about the cross?
What about the vast number of faithful Christians who pray for healing and hear only crickets?
Silence.
You're graciously looking at me saying, Pete, you've given us theory.
I live in the real world.
I live in the world where I stare trouble in the face.
And if you're thinking that way, please hear what I now say.
I agree with you.
In fact, if you're not thinking that way, I need to challenge you.
Because I think these amazing claims in Psalm 91 should be a challenge for any honest believer
who looks around the church family and sees their brothers and sisters in Christ and you
cannot deny that bad things happen to godly people.
Please note, I didn't say good people.
No one's good except God alone, but godly people.
And that should be troubling.
And so with integrity, we have to relook at the Psalm and ask the question, how do we
reconcile the great promises and assurances of God's protection with the very real difficulties
that we face in our lives?
The question with an easy answer is this, can God deliver us from our troubles?
Well, yes, we know he can.
He is God and often he does.
But the real question we want to ask him is this, what happens when he doesn't?
Isn't that the real question?
Because the fact is many come to God asking for healing, asking for deliverance, and they're
neither healed nor delivered.
Not everyone is lifted out of their troubling situation.
So what do we do?
Some foolishly try to dilute the Psalms promises.
They try to put qualifiers in there.
They say, yeah, but, and the result is you quench its power and you remove its truth
and comfort.
Others dismiss it as a bad joke.
It's wishful thinking.
You conclude it doesn't work.
It clearly doesn't work.
It's a waste of time and you harden your heart.
But we don't do that.
That's to misunderstand what the Psalm actually says.
So let's go back to our ifs and thens.
Because the Psalms claim is this, if you choose to dwell in the shelter of the most high,
first if.
If you abide under the shadow of the Almighty, second if.
If you put yourself under the wing of God, third if.
And if you trust in his faithfulness, fourth if.
If, if, if, if, then, then, even though you go through trouble, you can be certain, and
here are the four key words, God is with you.
That's what you can be sure of.
That's the point.
The whole point of this Psalm and what the Psalmist is trying to tell us is to know the
presence of God in and through the trouble that you are in.
Inevitably, you are going to go through trouble.
But that particular trouble need not go through you.
That's how the Christian stands.
This is how, when the whole world is going to pieces around us, the Christian stands
firm and solid.
That's who we should be.
Because we're standing on the rock of Jesus Christ, and that rock won't move.
So the Lord says in verse 10, no evil will overtake you.
He doesn't say no evil will touch you.
He doesn't say that.
Well, what he says in verse 15 is he will call upon me, she will call upon me, and I
will answer.
And I'll be with them in trouble.
And I will deliver, and I will honor.
That's the promise.
And so though cancer may eat your flesh, it cannot eat your soul.
Though Alzheimer's might make you forget, God will never forget you.
This Psalmist is not talking about safety in a safe world.
So many of our prayers seem to be that it's absolute nonsense.
We pray as if we should be bubble wrapped and go around and nothing can affect us.
It's just, it's unreal and it's foolish.
And it certainly doesn't help anyone stand.
It's not like that at all.
The Psalmist doesn't say no afflictions.
It says no evil.
No evil.
No evil will overtake you.
Afflictions touch the flesh.
Evil touches the spirit.
This is the truth.
The world is full of accusation and attack and disease and danger.
There are spiritual enemies.
There are human enemies.
But God says, if you make me your shelter, if you have the perspective of me being the
great God, the almighty God, then you'll be protected from all evil.
That's the promise.
And that's the affirmation you and I need at the beginning of the week.
And we have no idea what this week holds and what's coming along the way.
So my closing question to you is, where do you put your trust?
In whom do you put your faith?
That's the question, isn't it?
Do you trust more in God's word than in the word of the world?
Will you say, I'm going to revere this holy Lord or I'm going to succumb to the craziness
around me?
I'm not asking you to close your ears, listen to medical opinion, for example, but trust
in the great healer all the time.
Do you see the difference?
He's the one.
We fear him and we trust him and we tremble at his word more than anything or anyone else
because we are in his hands.
We're completely safe there.
Let me finish with my if-thens.
If we take refuge in God the Father, then the Father has us.
He has you.
And he won't let go.
And you know why we know that?
Because Jesus promised, no one can pluck you out of my Father's hand.
Shall we pray?
Heavenly Father, like the seraphs, we worship you.
We proclaim you are holy, holy, holy.
We acknowledge you as the most high God and that it's only by your grace that we can be
in your shelter.
Thank you for loving us.
Thank you for caring for us.
Lord Jesus, we worship you as the King of all kings and the Lord of all lords.
We choose to live under the shadow of your wings, knowing that you will never leave us
or forsake us.
Thank you for your faithfulness to us.
And this spirit, when we face trials and temptations this week, we ask you to help us to keep our
thoughts on Jesus.
Please strengthen our wills, grow within us the fruit of maturity, and give us the wisdom
and courage to stand firm.
And we ask all these things in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Amen.
Thanks for listening today, and we hope that you come back again next week.
Today's sermon was taken from the July 14, 2024 service at Trinity Church, Streetsville,
in Mississauga, Ontario.