God Our Sanctuary

God’s people would please take their Bibles and turn to Psalm 46. Psalm 46. An out-of-town friend some time ago asked me if there was still a fort in Fort Collins. Did the structure itself still exist? And I didn’t know. It was an interesting enough question that I went digging. I soon discovered that no. There is no longer a fort in Fort Collins. A fort did exist once, but it was a very short-lived existence.

It was a standard U.S. Army outpost established to protect the wagon trains and mail routes from Indian attacks. The fort was established in 1862, named after Army Colonel William Collins. The original site was located northwest of town in our modern day town of La Porte. That site was almost completely destroyed by a flood in the summer of 1864 and then it was relocated and rebuilt ironically right on the Poudre River and only two years later it was completely decommissioned.

So our fort came and went and that got me wondering there must be almost a hundred cities and towns in America that are named after forts and I got curious and wondered how many of those structures still exist. In Colorado, Fort Morgan is long gone. Fort Lupton is a replica. What about our neighboring states? There’s a Fort Defiance in Arizona that gave me hope. But there’s no sign of that structure anywhere anymore. Further east, Fort Pier in South Dakota? No. Fort Dodge in Iowa? No. Only a flimsy replica there. Fort Worth? Not even a remnant.

All of these edifices that were once strongholds intended to protect those who dwelled within and without, they’re all gone. And it seems that we’re left utterly vulnerable to our foes. Beyond forts and walls and fortified castles, people seek security in a number of other ways. Family, friends, legal recourse, weapons, powerful connections, financial independence. But not even those things can make us truly secure. And so where can we go? Where can we retreat? Where can we hide in times of trouble?

This is our psalmist’s angle in Psalm 46. Psalm 46, and here the psalmist gives God’s people precise information about where to go in crisis. It’s not an earthly man-made fort. or even a castle. In fact, it’s not a seemingly formidable edifice at all. If you would read along with me in Psalm 46. God is our refuge and strength of very present help in trouble. Therefore, we will not fear. Though the earth should change, And though the mountains slip into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains quake at its swelling pride, Selah, there is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy dwelling places of the Most High.

God is in the midst of her. She will not be moved. God will help her when morning dawns. The nations made an uproar. The kingdoms tottered. He raised his voice. The earth melted. The Lord of hosts is with us. The God of Jacob is our stronghold. Selah. Come, behold the works of the Lord. Who has wrought desolations in the earth? He makes wars to cease to the end of the earth. He breaks the bow and cuts the spear in two. He burns the chariots with fire. Cease striving 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 stronghold. Now, let’s be fair.

Out of all the forts established in America in the 1800s, only one remains standing. Fort Stockton in Texas, a few limestone buildings are all that remain, and now it functions as more of a museum and probably a gift shop than a defensible stronghold. There are also active military installations that still have the word fort in them, Fort Bragg, Fort Carson, Fort Hood, and the like.

But what the psalmist speaks of here is far greater, far stronger, far more impregnable than any physical structure. The sanctuary to which the psalmist urges us retreat is the safety of God himself. He encourages us to nestle into God for safety and security. And there are three such encouragements in this psalm. The specific context of this psalm is open to much debate. Rather than chronicling a particular incident, the psalm presents general truths, encouragements. But it does this against the description of an assault on God’s people, complete with a siege against the city. The particulars are not referenced in the title, and so we shouldn’t be too dogmatic, but there is a biblical account that parallels many features of this psalm.

During Hezekiah’s reign, king of Judah, the Assyrian king, Sennacherib, mounted an attack on Judah. Let me give you a brief overview. I’m not going to have you turn to 2 Chronicles 32, but if you want to turn and look there, 2 Chronicles 32 records that Assyria’s king, Sennacherib, begins an assault on Judah.

Through the prophet Isaiah’s admonition, Hezekiah eventually puts his faith in God. Assyria is preparing a siege against Judah. But King Sennacherib makes a fatal mistake in mocking Hezekiah’s God. Hezekiah strategically cuts off the water supply beyond the city. He shores up his military leaders, his walls and his weapons. Even more importantly, Hezekiah humbles himself before the Lord in prayer, pleading for him to intervene. God responds by assuring Hezekiah that he would help. And God does deliver Judah from the Assyrians’ hands.

I’ll point out a few of these connections as we work our way through the psalm. Psalm 46 is also famously the psalm that carried Martin Luther through the pitch black days of the Reformation. And it is this psalm that was the inspiration for that hymn that we just sang, A Mighty Fortress is Our God. Often, as tensions of persecution mounted, Martin Luther would request that Psalm 46 either be read or sung. As one historian noted, in the darkest times, he used to say, come, let us sing the 46th Psalm and let them do their worst.

Luther’s own words bear testimony to the significance of this psalm to him personally. He said, we sing this song to the praise of God because God is with us. and powerfully and miraculously preserves and defends his church and his word against all fanatical spirits, against the gates of hell, against the implacable hatred of the devil, and against the assault of the world, the flesh, and sin.

One final note. Before we delve into the psalm itself, Luther’s hymn is unlike the original in one sense. His is strong, even forceful, like a battle cry almost. But the title calls attention to the choir director that this song be set to Alamoth. And that designation most likely refers to music set to a higher pitch, say soprano. a delicate and uplifting expression of confidence in God.

The lyrics, however, of Luther’s hymn are painstakingly representative of the psalm itself. It extends a call to distressed believers in every age to retreat to a haven, a sanctuary, if you will, where we can be made safe from threats and pressures and trouble. It provides the answer to the vexing questions of life.

Where do we go when we’ve received difficult news? Where do we go when we are maliciously slandered or attacked, whether by a person or by the devil himself? Where do we go when our world seems to be falling apart? Where do we go when we’re burdened, perplexed, bewildered? Where do we go when we’re hurt and hurting? Where do we turn for work and health and financial situations?

Psalm 46 provides the answer to all of those questions and more. It invites God’s children into a safe haven and provides them with three encouragements that derive plainly from the God-given structure of this psalm. Three distinct paragraphs identified by the repeated Selah in verses 3, 7, and 11. That Selah, as we have previously noted in our study of the Psalms, likely refers to a musical interlude of sorts that gives emphasis to the words that proceed. The call to think and to ponder, to meditate on those lines. There are three distinct thoughts on which to meditate.

If you would, let’s go back to the beginning. God is our sanctuary, and the psalmist here is giving us encouragements for nestling into that sanctuary. Very first thing that we learn from this psalm is the nature of the sanctuary to which we are invited.

It’s not a newly remodeled church sanctuary. It’s not a fort. It’s not a high-walled castle surrounded by an alligator-filled moat. It’s not a fortress equipped with all manner of weaponry, arrows, catapults, cannons. Not a church or a building of any kind. It’s not even a place at all, even heaven itself. The sanctuary to which the psalmist beckons us is no other than God himself. God, declares the psalmist, is our refuge and strength. God is our sanctuary.

God himself is the subject of this entire Psalm, referred to nearly a dozen times by a variety of names. God, Elohim, six times, the Most High, verse four, the Lord of hosts, and the God of Jacob, verse seven, which titles are repeated again in verse 11, and the Lord, Yahweh, in verse eight. The first encouragement that our psalmist gives for retreating to God, our sanctuary, is that he is an unassailable means of security. He says of God that he is our refuge and strength. Again, this stronghold to which we may retreat is not a building, it’s God himself. Several weeks ago when we looked at Psalm 5, I knew then that I was treading upon this same theme, God as refuge. And I explained to you there that this is an overwhelmingly used image in the Psalms.

Psalm 11.1, in the Lord I take refuge, says King David.

Psalm 18.2, the Lord is my rock, my fortress, and my deliverer, my God, my rock in whom I take refuge.

Psalm 59.16, you have been my stronghold and refuge in the day of my distress. Other biblical writers use this same metaphor. Asaph in Psalm 73, I have made the Lord God my refuge.

Jeremiah 17.17, you are my refuge. in the day of disaster. But the writers of Scripture also assure that God is a refuge for all believers, not just themselves. David, in the Psalms, extends this to others. How blessed are all who take refuge in him. Psalm 212.

Psalm 62.8. God is a refuge for us. God’s prophets declare the same truth, Isaiah 25.

You have been a defense for the helpless, for the needy, in his distress, a refuge from the storm, a shade from the heat. Even the prophet Joel, the Lord is a refuge for his people. But God is not only our refuge, the psalmist says, he’s also our strength.

When we speak of strength, We think of it as a potential power, but God’s strength is a demonstrated strength, as we’ll see in a moment. God’s strength is infinitely practical. Psalm 62, seven, on God, my salvation and glory rest. The rock of my strength and my refuge is God. Our very salvation is a result of God’s strength. It is superlative.

He is a tower of strength, says Psalm 61.3. It is a shared strength.

Psalm 29.11, the Lord will give strength to his people. It is a confidence building strength.

Psalm 8.2, 28.7, the Lord is my strength and my shield. It is a prompter to worship, is this strength.

Psalm 59.17, on my strength, I will sing praises to you.

And this secure refuge, this unmatched strength, proves to be a magnificent help to God’s people. It’s not just assistance, but the psalmist says a very present help in trouble. Not just present, available, but very much or exceedingly so. No matter the occasion, No matter the hour, no matter the trouble, no matter the need, God is always and abundantly available to help. So this unshakeable truth, that God is our refuge and strength and help, leads the writer to a conclusion, which he begins in verse two, therefore, we will not fear. That word, therefore, is the psalmist’s reasonable conclusion based on all the data before him. God, our refuge, our strength, our help.

The fear is the fruitless pastime of humanity, isn’t it? We fear the weather. We fear the future. We fear the unknown. We fear crime. We fear war and decisions. We fear other people. And there are admittedly official causes of fear. Phobias, we call them. Arachnophobia, fear of spiders. Acrophobia, the fear of heights. Claustrophobia, the fear of enclosed spaces.

But it seems that there is a new phobia discovered and identified every day. Did you know? that there is a fear of selfies. But they’re calling it selfie phobia. Nomophobia is a fear of losing smartphone access. Carbophobia, well, do I even need to explain it? Fear of eating carbohydrates. We are a worrisome people.

But when the psalmist begins his statement with therefore, he declares that logically we have no cause for worry if God is our refuge and strength and help. The psalmist appends four qualifiers to this declaration of fearlessness, four statements that all begin with the word though. These four qualifiers are writers presenting scenarios that potentially diminish or altogether destroy a person’s confidence. Though the earth should change, verse two, and though the mountains slip into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains quake at its swelling pride, All four of these conditional clauses point to some cataclysmic alteration of the earth as we know it.

Bad stuff. The first statement doesn’t tell us how the earth may change, but given the context, it can’t possibly be positive. The other three clauses make that clear. Mountains slipping into the heart of the sea. Waters roaring and foaming. Mountains quaking. We often refer to such things as natural disasters. Flood, hurricane, earthquake, tsunami, meteor-like strikes. Volcanic eruptions, landslides, and all the rest. Even global warming. Once a person has seen or heard of such dreadful events, the natural response is fear.

But in God, such fear is unnecessary, even irrational. The one who trusts in God need not live in fear or even of the worst events imaginable. The argument here if you recognize is from the greater to the lesser. The psalmist presents the worst of the worst causes for fear. But if we need not fear those things, mountains slipping into the heart of the sea, roaring waters, if we need not fear those things, then we need not fear the lesser things. some relationship issue, some trouble, some diagnosis, some work situation or financial or health situation. We need not fear. Isaiah said it well. The steadfast of mind, you will keep in perfect peace because he trusts in you. No matter what challenge, what difficulty or potential fear presents, itself to us, we can retreat to God as our sanctuary.

We can go to him in prayer for comfort, for assurance, for strength. So the psalmist, first of all, encourages God’s people to nestle into God himself because he, as our sanctuary, is an unassailable means of security. But there’s a second section with a second encouragement for nestling into God himself. We find it in verses four through seven. Not only is God our sanctuary, an unassailable means of security, but secondly, he is an unbounded source of grace. Not only is God our sanctuary, but He is our supply as well. The psalmist speaks of grace as a river.

A river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy dwelling places of the Most High. This is not a literal city as we would think of it. And even the idea of God dwelling there is what we would call an anthropomorphism. Descriptions rendered in such a way that humans can grasp, can understand. The psalmist here is referring to heaven as the location of our sanctuary, but God, as most high, has established himself as the sovereign and almighty God. And just as in the Garden of Eden, you remember one river became four, He says here that the river, singular, becomes streams, plural, indicating a steady and continual flow of supply to the people of God who have taken refuge in Him.

This is the beautiful image of Psalm 65. Psalm 65, just listen, says this. Verse nine, you visit the earth and cause it to overflow. You greatly enrich it. The stream of God is full of water. You prepare their grain, for thus you prepare the earth. You water its furrows abundantly. You settle its ridges. You soften it with showers. You bless its growth. Water is nourishing and refreshing. Water is life. Psalmist’s illustration here of a river may well have been from a real-life occasion.

You see, when a foreign army would lay siege against a city, they would surround it and they would begin to starve them out. But even if the besieged city was well supplied with food and weaponry, it couldn’t last long without water. So the attacking army would soon dam up the streams that fed the walled city. In Hezekiah’s case, he reversed things. so that he denied water to the foreign invaders.

God’s enemies may surround Judah, but they were powerless to do any harm. They not only had food and water, did Judah, but they had God himself. Psalm 36.8 declares, they drink their fill of the abundance of your house, and you give them to drink of the river of your delights. God’s people were well cared for. The river was flowing.

God’s enemies can bang on the walls of his fortress all they want, but they cannot starve or dehydrate his people. All such efforts are in vain, and the city of God is impervious to man’s assaults. This again is not with reference so much to the quality of the construction of this so-called edifice.

It’s because of him who dwells within. Look there at verse five, God is in the midst of her. The city of God is not only well supplied, it is steadfast, immovable. The psalmist says, more solid and stable than a mountain of granite. A man-made edifice, no matter how well constructed, can and often is dismantled stone by stone. Not so God’s dwelling. The city in which God dwells will not be moved, he says.

At the end of verse five, there is yet another hint at the idea of this ongoing siege. The longstanding military strategy to attack at dawn. God is ready for this as well. God will help her when morning dawns. Before the enemy has even had his coffee or gathered his weaponry, God is mounting an invincible defense. In the case of the Assyrians, both 2 Kings and Isaiah record this dreadful detail. The angel of the Lord went out and struck 185,000 in the camp of the Assyrians. And when men arose early in the morning, all of these were dead.

To underscore the idea of an attack On God and His people, the psalmist suddenly shifts focus in verse six to God’s enemies. He speaks of it very briefly here. He speaks in terms of an uproar. A very different word than Hebrews, a different Hebrew word than in Psalm 2. But Psalm 2 opens with a similar thought. Why are the nations in an uproar and the people devising a vain thing? Both Psalms are translated with that word uproar. Both refer to noise and really nothing more. In our modern day language, we would mock this noise as a kerfluffle, a fuss, a fit. Those kinds of noisy uproars seem to be very popular in our own day. Riots, marches, protests, but they’re nothing new.

God is not affected by any of this. It’s just blustering by godless people who think that their noise-making may rattle God and his people and bring about some kind of change. It won’t. You notice in verse six, no sooner does the uproar begin, God puts it down.

He totters the kingdoms. Merely raising his voice, the same voice that first called creation into existence, he makes the earth to melt with a word. This is the cry of judgment. Isaiah again links this to the Assyrian threat when he says that the voice of the Lord, the Assyrians will be terrified when he strikes with the rod. The voice of the Lord is the one that caused them to fear. The second section closes with a refrain that is repeated in verse 11, as I pointed out.

The Lord of hosts is with us. The God of Jacob is our stronghold. Here we have this idea of a fortress again. Stronghold. It’s a different word than refuge, but it communicates the same idea. As this word hosts, the Lord of hosts, a title that’s used of God more than 250 times in the Old Testament, that Hebrew word is twice presented in the New Testament as Sabaoth. We heard it today in our hymn. Romans 9, 29 and James 4 translate it the same way. It’s a transliteration of a Hebrew word.

But the reference is to armies, whether angelic or human. God is the God of all armies. The reference to the God of Jacob calls attention to God’s faithfulness and his great patience with Jacob the patriarch. God was a faithful defender of very human Jacob. The Lord of hosts. presents God as almighty, then the God of Jacob presents God as sympathetic, merciful, accessible.

Well, we are encouraged to retreat to God, our sanctuary, because he’s an unassailable means of security and an unbounded source of grace. But there is a third and final encouragement that we find in verses eight through 11. God, our sanctuary, is an inexhaustible history of faithfulness. Find it in verses eight through 11.

In this third and final section, the psalmist bids his readers come and behold the works of the Lord. This is no doubt a call to all readers, but particularly to the unbelieving people and the nations who are at enmity with God. Thomas says, essentially, pause. Pause and consider God’s history of faithfulness.

He says it very generally in verse eight, referring to God’s actions as works. And then he provides four defining statements about these works. God’s works are in no way limited to these. He just outlines the way that God works. God has done a myriad of other miracles throughout the course of history, creation, the great flood, the plagues against Pharaoh, the parting of the Red Sea, and so many more. All of those things would fall under the general heading of God’s works. But the psalmist is referring to something very specific here. His focus is on those things done in defense of his sanctuary, even himself. Would you look at verse eight?

Come behold the works of the Lord who has wrought desolations in the earth. He makes wars to cease to the end of the earth. He breaks the bow and cuts the spear in two. He burns the chariots with fire. Pretty dynamic description. It’s he who is wrought desolations in the earth.

Speaking of his overwhelming victories over his enemies, the pages of scripture are replete with such accounts. The great flood, Sodom and Gomorrah, Jericho, Babylon, even Jerusalem. All of this affirms the truth which Job declared. He makes the nations great, then destroys them. He enlarges the nations, then leads them away.

God is God and he is sovereign and almighty. The psalmist makes a second statement in verse nine, he who makes wars to cease to the ends of the earth. God is a God of peace. Men will almost always perpetuate wars. God ends them. Prophet Micah says that one day nations will hammer their swords into plowshares. Never again will they train for war. Thomas also says, it is he that breaks the bow, cuts the spear in two, burns the chariots with fire. Men make weapons of war, God destroys them. God alone destroyed Sennacherib’s entire army by the angel of the Lord. And when one nation conquered another’s army, often one of the battle customs was to gather all of their weaponry, pile it into a heap, and burn it. That was the final sign of total and complete victory over their foes.

God instructed Joshua Joshua 11, seemingly every country in the Mideast was aligned in an attack against them. Hazor, Madon, Shimron, Akshath, Canaanite, Amorite, Hittite, Perizzite, Jebusite, Hivite, and others. And God comforts Joshua, saying, do not be afraid because of them. I will deliver all of them slain before Israel. You shall burn their chariots with fire.” God has written a long, continuous history of faithfulness by his works, by his miracles. Because of that, verse 10, he makes a final appeal to the heathen nations.

Cease striving and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations. I will be exalted in the earth. Another way of describing this cease driving is be still. That’s the way the King James and many other translators have that. I chuckle because my grandmother used to use that phrase when me and probably my siblings were acting up. She would just say, be still. And the psalmist quotes God here, be still, cease striving, it’s a merciful call. Lay down your arms. Put away your enmity against me. Repent of your evil. Come to me, the one true God.

God made it clear to Pharaoh and to the Egyptians and to countless nations throughout history One day, everyone will know that he is the Lord, the heart of God, as Peter captures it in 2 Peter 3, 9, where he likewise there appeals to the godless. The Lord is not slow about his promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish, but for all to come to repentance. Appropriately, the psalmist closes with his refrain. The Lord of hosts is with us. The God of all armies, angelic and human. The God of Jacob, our approachable, loving God. What a fitting cap to the entire psalm, an encouragement to take sanctuary in God himself. The scripture makes it clear. that no one can come to the Father except through the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the key that unlocks this entire psalm. Only in Him are these encouragements made possible. Only in Jesus Christ are we made eternally secure. John 10 28. Jesus tells his followers, I will give eternal life to them, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hands. That’s security.

Only Jesus Christ, only in Jesus Christ can we tap into the unbounded source of grace. Peter opens his second epistle with these wonderful words familiar to us. Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus Christ, our Lord, seeing that his divine power, God has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness. Only in Christ do we have an unbounded source of grace. And only in Christ and we fully experience the fullness of God’s history of faithfulness, the completion of his plan of redemption, the peace treaty, the greatest peace treaty ever enacted is that which takes away the enmity, the natural enmity towards God in our hearts. Only in Jesus Christ do we have redemption, Paul says in Colossians 1, 4, the forgiveness of sins. God is our sanctuary.

What great encouragement we have to go to him. Would you go to him now in prayer? Our loving God, we thank you for this psalm. We thank you for the writer of this psalm who captures so well the human heart and our fears and our encouragements to fall into you for comfort, for wisdom, for security, for grace, to be reminded of your great faithfulness in this world. Father God, if there are any who do not know the Lord Jesus Christ, Father, we pray that you might stir their hearts, that you might awaken them to the truth that God is the unbounded source of all of these things, but it is through Jesus Christ that we access them, and that in Christ we are eternally secure. In Christ we have a steady flow and stream of grace, and only in Christ do we tap into God’s redemption, the fullness of his faithfulness to humanity. Lord God, we thank you, and we pray that you would encourage the hearts of your people, that we would not fear, regardless of what is going on all around us, that we would look to you in faith. Lord God, we thank you for your grace, your abundant grace. We pray for it now, in Jesus’ name, amen.