Psalm 46

To the choirmaster. Of the Sons of Korah. According to Alamoth. A Song

1 God is our refuge and strength, a very present [well proved] help in trouble.

Having just described the wedding of the God’s anointed and the promise of a long and fruitful reign, the psalmist declares that God is the ultimate refuge and strength for his people. God is the one who makes the king and the nation secure. The modifier “very” before “present” is significant as it places even greater emphasis on the nearness of God, dwelling with his people. This is a thread that runs through the entire psalm. God’s people live in a city with God himself. Note that this psalm is also a song for the community to sing and pray together. First, God is our refuge. He is the place that we run to for safety. In the ancient world, when a foreign army invaded, the citizens fled to the cities where they could be sheltered behind the walls. They were refugees. Second, God is our strength. Israel was never known in the ancient world as being a military superpower. It was not just in their cultural DNA -- they were shepherds, farmers, and fishermen. They were in a position where they had to rely on God as their strength, to fight for them with divine intervention. Recall the stories of God using natural phenomena to rout Israel’s enemies (storms, parting the waters of the sea). The New Testament will echo this theology in the “when we are weak, that’s when we are strong; strength is perfected in weakness.” It’s how Jesus conquered sin and death, through the weakness of the cross. Finally, God is our very present help in trouble. This is not a promise that trouble will not come to us. In fact it is a guarantee. This is life. The promise is that God is always with us. Not just in a way that He is in our imaginations and our thoughts in difficult times. Not in some kind of metaphysical or philosophical way. Not in some way that psychologists attempt to explain away as our own projection of a father-figure or something. No, he is with us in reality. As real as every physical thing in this world might be, God is even more real. How do we know this? Because Jesus really suffered on the cross. God himself entered into our pain and trouble. He is not immune from it, but fully suffers with us. This is why, “Jesus wept”. God was suffering with us. Do not doubt God’s presence in the darkest of times and the greatest seasons of pain. He is our very present help. Emmanuel, “God with us” is his name. 

2 Therefore we will not fear though the earth gives way, though the mountains be moved into the heart of the sea,

3 though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains tremble at its swelling. Selah

Because God is our refuge, strength and very present help, there is no circumstance under which we should be afraid. The psalmist describes the worst possible scenario. He describes the undoing of the actions of the third day of creation when God separated the land from the water. With creation reversing into chaos, life as we know it would cease to exist. This is a world-ending scenario and yet even this is not enough to make us fear or to change the nature of God’s presence with us. Earthquakes, floods, and any other natural disaster cannot move us from the presence of God and his help. This is a categorical statement that rules out God failing us for any reason whatsoever. So this begs the question, do we trust him? I do not know what today holds, but it is likely not the apocalypse, so there’s no reason to fear. No one is concerned that the world is going to end today, but we are worried about many things of lesser importance. In fact, those things sound downright trivial by comparison. If God can be trusted for the big things (like holding the physical world together), can’t he be trusted with the smaller things? If God is with us through the worst of things, surely he’ll be with us through the everyday things. Walk with Him today in the confidence that He is with you in the most real way possible, and that is something you can trust. 

4 There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy habitation of the Most High.

5 God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved; God will help her when morning dawns.

While the mountains may fall into the sea and the sea reclaim its dominion over the land (at least that’s what it feels like in the moment when your world is falling apart), the reality is that there is a river. If we focus on the river we see that it is the nourishing sustenance of the city of God. It flows from the mountains and into the place where God lives with his people. Jerusalem didn’t have any such river, so we are assuming that the song is referring to God himself as the river, the source of the city’s life and the defender of her people. Unlike the mountains which are shaking (same Hebrew word “tottering” as the previous verses), the city of God does not totter, does not shake. In fact, God will help her as soon as the night is over. There will be the night, a time of darkness, uncertainty, and fear, but when the morning comes, victory will be clear. This was true quite literally in the day when this was most likely written, 701 BC. Jerusalem was surrounded by the massive Assyrian army, but the city awakened to find that in the night, the angel of the LORD struck 185,000 soldiers dead and the remains of the army limped away in ignominy, her general assassinated as soon as he returned home. But that victory points to an even greater victory for all of humanity. There was a Friday when the earth shook and it seemed that all of creation was coming undone as men crucified the Creator. There was a dark night that followed as it seemed that God’s last words, “It is finished” might be the period at the end of the sentence. God is dead. But when morning dawned on the third day, the hosts of the enemy were flattened and their general had received a mortal head wound, leaving him enraged and in the throes of death. Hebrews 12 reminds us that this is the kingdom that we are receiving, an unshakable city. This reality is true because of the reality of what happened on that Passover weekend in Jerusalem. The defeat of the Assyrian army was just a snapshot of what was to come. There is no end to the comfort that this truth brings when we are facing the worst that the enemy can throw at us -- sickness, tragedy, pain, death. They may endure for the night, but morning will come. It always does. And with it comes the ultimate victory and residence in the city of God forever.

6 The nations rage, the kingdoms totter; he utters his voice, the earth melts.

7 The LORD of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress. Selah

While the psalmist may be describing the political situation in the world around 701 BC when Assyria was ascendant and wreaking havoc in the ancient near east, he could be writing about every period of time in human history. The nations are always raging. This is actually a different word than is used in Psalm 2:1. Here the nations are not raging against God, but against one another. Pushing and shoving each other around, playing a grown up version of king of the mountain. They deceive themselves into thinking they are the ultimate power in the world, but then God speaks and the earth melts. Sometimes this is in the form of natural disasters -- hurricanes, floods, tornadoes, earthquakes, tsunamis, fires -- these all remind us that we are not in control of our world and can never be. Even today I believe we are deceiving ourselves when we think that we can turn back global warming. We are not gods. It is when men presume to be gods that this world becomes an even more dangerous place. In their hubris civilizations have determined that they are what’s best for the world so they conquer and oppress, clinging to a vision of utopia that inevitably becomes a dystopia. God speaks and the earth melts. We are utterly and completely at his mercy. We exist because of his benevolence. Rage against Him all you want, but He is absolutely sovereign. If you are in opposition to Him, I could wish you good luck, but it will do you no good. The good news is that the sovereign LORD of the angel armies (hosts) is with us. He chooses us. He himself is our fortress. The Proverbs tell us that the name of the LORD is a tower that the righteous run into. We do not trust in a building, an institution, or a government. We trust in the LORD who commands the host of heaven -- angels, stars, and galaxies. There’s no safer place to be in this universe when you are resting in the LORD. The world and its governments can be falling apart, literally and figuratively, but your eternal soul is secure in God’s hands. This is something that the unbeliever does not have, and this is what compels us to share this good news. Interestingly, this is one of the rare uses of the divine name YHWH by the Sons of Korah in Book 2. The first use was in 42:8 (the turning point of the psalm), and the second is here in 46:7.

8 Come, behold the works of the LORD, how he has brought desolations on the earth.

9 He makes wars cease to the end of the earth; he breaks the bow and shatters the spear; he burns the chariots with fire.

The writer invites us to come and examine the works of the LORD (another use of the divine name). Look at how he has brought desolations on the earth. Consider how he is the great peacemaker, breaking the weapons of war and destroying the rapid attack capability of armies. This vision of world peace may also be seen in Isaiah and Ezekiel. Isaiah was a contemporary of Hezekiah in 701 BC and witnessed the devastation of the Assyrian army at the hands of the angel of the LORD. I presume the clean up of an army of 185,000 dead involved the burning of a lot of bodies and weapons (Israel had no use for them). Was this a description of that event? Is it a vision of that event before it happened? Is it prophetic of an event yet to come? We certainly haven’t seen the end of war on the earth, but we have seen the end of wars, and we’ve experienced the joy of peace and rebuilding. The psalmist declares God to be sovereign, so his hand is involved in the fate of nations, while still allowing for human free will. Whether in war or peace, God is always with us. He is with us when nations are raging and tottering and he is with us after they’ve fallen and we’re picking up the pieces and burning the piles of rubble. This image does point us to a future time when the Prince of Peace will bring an end to all war and injustice. We labor toward that end each day as free citizens of his kingdom, but until He comes war will be with us and He will be with us. Just taking a moment to try to grasp the suffering that has come as a result of armed conflicts through the years -- the death, the wounds, the displacement of people, the trauma of witnessing and experiencing it all, the death camps, the executions, the loss of property and destruction of entire cities, the genocide of peoples -- it is a violent, pain-filled world, groaning for something better, for peace, for shabat. That is the word for “cease” here. He makes wars sabbath. Humans could use a sabbath from war, but that will not happen until everyone embraces the way of the Prince of Peace who set himself aside for the sake of others. When we can do that, we will begin to see a sabbath from war. 

10 “Be still, and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth!”

11 The LORD of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress. Selah

One of the most familiar verses in all of the psalms, in part because of the various musical settings in which it has been placed, I’ve always wondered what the tone of God’s voice is here. Until this point we’ve only heard the voice of the psalmist, speaking truth about the ever-present, all-powerful God. He is with us in the storm and he causes wars to cease. Now he commands us to cease. Does he command us in a gentle whisper or is it the shout of a frustrated parent? The language gives us no clues, so we are left to our own interpretation, as it should be. There are times when God needs to shout to get our attention, to wake us from our paralysis of fear and anxiety. There are other times we experience his voice as a quiet whisper in our ear, just like we might speak to a baby who is fussing. The Hebrew word “be still” is translated elsewhere as “sink, rest, relax, cease, abandon, withdraw, forsake.” Each of these provides a rich image for our commanded action here. Take the first three words, “sink, rest, relax”, which all suggest the image of lying down, sinking into your bed and allowing the tension in your body to be released. Go to sleep. The Hebrew word “know” is broadly used to indicate knowledge through personal experience, even being used as a euphemism for sexual intercourse between husband and wife. Perhaps “know” is less of a command and more of what we experience when we rest. “Be still and then you will experience that YHWH is God.” While all the world seems to be falling apart and kingdoms are tottering on the brink of collapse, God is rising up. He is towering above the nations and the earth. He reigns supreme over creation and the nations, the two realms that were described as coming apart in the previous verses. God holds all things together. We cannot help but see Jesus here who sustains all things by his powerful word (Hebrews 1:4) and himself commanded the storm to cease with the words,”Be still”. In that moment the disciples knew that they were not in the boat with an ordinary man and they trembled in awe at the presence of God in their midst. Listen to God’s voice speak to you today, “Be still and experience my presence.”