Rev. David Holwick W
First Baptist Church
Ledgewood, New Jersey
July 29, 2001
Psalm 46
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Sermon summary: I did not feel this was a successful sermon
because it is too disjointed. (We had just returned from a
mission trip to Haiti and had a baptism that afternoon). The
theme is that in a tumultuous world, God is still in control
so we should wait for his guidance.
I. Life can seem out of control.
A. Turmoil in nature. 46:2
1) Western forest fires.
2) Current eruption of Mt. Etna in Sicily.
B. Turmoil in politics. 46:6
1) Cease-fire in Israel hasn't taken hold yet...
2) National Museum in Haiti, no mention of history after
1940s. (Thus no Papa Doc, Baby Doc or Aristide)
a) Our Haitian guide: it is too controversial.
b) Coups, riots, oppression, turmoil.
C. Turmoil in your own life.
1) Words of Jesus - each day has enough trouble of its own.
2) Where can we go for help?
II. We can go to God.
A. God has things under control.
1) He controls nature.
a) We tend to think of nature as random.
1> Disasters come for no reason at all.
b) The Bible suggests that there is always a reason for
events.
c) Even natural disasters can serve God's purposes.
d) Jesus - not a bird falls from the sky but that God
knows it.
2) He controls the nations, including ours.
Most Americans during the Civil War believed God was on
their side.
After many military defeats Abraham Lincoln wrote down his
private thoughts on the matter in "Meditation on the
Divine Will."
He wrote:
"The will of God prevails.
In great contests each party claims to act in accordance
with the will of God.
Both may be, and one must be, wrong.
God can not be for and against the same thing at the
same time.
In the present civil war it is quite possible that God's
purpose is something different from the purpose of
either party -
- and yet the human instrumentalities, working just as
they do, are of the best adaptation to effect His
purpose.
I am almost ready to say this is probably true - that God
wills this contest, and wills that is shall not end yet.
By His mere quiet power, on the minds of the now
contestants, He could have either saved or destroyed the
Union without a human contest.
Yet the contest began.
And having begun He could give the final victory to either
side any day.
Yet the contest continues."
The truth had begun to dawn to Lincoln that this God was not
at the nation's beck and call, but the nation at his.
#1846
B. Even those things that don't seem under control, will be.
1) God will impose his peace on our unruly world. 46:9
a) Ultimate peace cannot come through treaties.
b) Will we be part of his peace, or crushed by it?
2) God's peace exists already, in a special place.
a) Verse 4 alludes to the Heavenly Jerusalem.
1> God's city, with God's people.
2> A river flows through it, symbolizing God's grace.
3> Book of Revelation - no more crying or pain there.
b) It is a city of joy.
1> God is there, so it cannot fail.
2> We can be there too, through faith in Jesus.
III. We need to be under God's control.
A. Give your fears to him.
1) God is bigger than your problems.
B. Be still and listen to him.
1) The Harpooner's Calm.
In Hermann Melville's "Moby Dick" there is a violent,
turbulent scene in which a whale boat scuds across a
frothing ocean in pursuit of the great white whale,
Moby Dick.
The sailors are laboring fiercely, every muscle is taut,
all attention and energy is concentrated on the task.
The cosmic conflict between good and evil is joined:
the chaotic sea and demonic sea monster versus the
morally outraged man, Captain Ahab.
In this boat there is one man who does nothing.
He does not hold an oar; he does not perspire; he does not
shout.
This man is the harpooner, quite and poised, waiting.
And then this sentence:
"To insure the greatest efficiency in the dart, the
harpooners of this world must start to their feet out
of idleness, and not from out of toil."
#19653
2) As God says through David, "Be still and know I am God."
a) Action is not always the best solution. 46:10
1> Often, we just spin our wheels.
2> Take time to center yourself on God.
b) Acknowledge that God exists, and has the power.
In his sermon "Finding God in a Busy World," John Killinger
tells this story.
He was in Brooklyn Heights visiting the church where one
of the greatest Congregationalist ministers had once
preached, the great Henry Ward Beecher.
In the evening, he walked with one of his hosts along the
promenade that overlooks Manhattan.
She talked about her life when she had arrived there
several years before.
Her husband had left her, and she was having difficulties
with her only child, a daughter.
She had come to this place at night thinking she could not
go on.
She hadn't wanted to take her life, but she didn't know how
she could go on in the pain and agony she was feeling.
She said she sat on one of the benches and looked across
the bay at the city.
She stared out at Liberty Island in the distance, and she
watched the tugboats as they moved around the bay.
She sat, and she sat.
The longer she sat, she said, the more her life seemed to
be invested with a kind of quietness that came over her
like a spirit.
Down deep she began to feel peaceful again.
She said she felt somehow that God was very near to her,
as if she could almost reach out and touch God.
Better yet, she didn't need to reach out.
God was touching her.
She felt whole and complete and healed as she sat there
that evening.
It became a turning point in her life.
"Since then," she said, "whenever I feel under pressure
at my job or from any personal problems, I come down
here and sit on this very bench.
I'm quiet; I feel it all over again, and everything is
all right."
"Be still and know that I am God.:
When we know that, everything is all right.
#3959
3) God wants to be your refuge in times of trouble. 46:1
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SOURCES FOR ILLUSTRATIONS USED IN THIS SERMON:
# 1846 "The Puzzling Faith Of Abraham Lincoln," by Mark A. Noll,
Christian History Magazine, #33, February 1992, page 11.
# 3959 "When They've Heard It All Before," by Craig Brian Larson, Online
Leadership Journal (through America Online), 1995.
#19653 "The Harpooner's Calm," by Eugene H. Peterson, Christianity
Today Magazine, September 8, 1985, page 35.
These and 18,000 others are part of a database that can be downloaded,
absolutely free, at http://www.holwick.com/database.html
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Commentary summary
Derek Kidner, Psalms (1)
I. God in the tumult - God's power over nature.
A. Catastrophe can happen.
B. Our security is in God.
1) Not God plus something else.
2) Refuge - the external aspect of salvation.
C. Strength - the internal, dynamic aspect of salvation.
1) God is within us, empowering weak for action.
D. Very present - implies his readiness to be found.
1) God is enough for any situation.
E. Nature shaken.
1) Made more explicit in 102:25ff, as is our security.
II. God in his city - his power over attackers of his city.
A. River - waters are no longer raging seas but life-giving river.
B. City of God - one of great themes of OT.
1) Has a heavenly perspective even in OT.
2) Points to a heavenly community.
C. Break of day - echo greatest deliverance, the Exodus.
D. Turmoil is always possible in fallen world.
III. God exalted in the earth - his power over whole warring world.
A. Vision of things to come.
1) Outcome is peace but process is judgment.
2) Makes wars cease - God forcibly disarms world.
B. End is stated as God's glory rather than our hopes.
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