It was actually a very dark night for Hezekiah and the people of Jerusalem. Jerusalem, as you know, is the capital of Judah. Judah’s a very small nation state. And at this point (about 700 BC) really all that was left of the once mighty Israel.

For a number of years, Judah had been a vassal state for the great kingdom of Assyria. That is, it was subjugated by Assyria and paid tribute to Assyria, and Hezekiah was itching for an opportunity to rebel.

But he was waiting his time until the king of Assyria passed away and the throne was being transitioned to the king’s son, soon to be King Sennacherib.

Sometimes mighty empires are at risk during times of transition. And so Hezekiah decided this was the time to make the move. And so he did a number of things:

1. He began to shore up the walls of Jerusalem
2. He built an aqueduct to bring water from a spring outside of the city into the city to prepare for a siege
3. He made an alliance with the Babylonians
4. He made an alliance with the Egyptians

And together, they announced they were in rebellion.

King Sennacherib didn’t take long to respond. He put an enormous army into the field. He marched out against Babylon and crushed it. He repulsed the army that was coming up from Egypt. And then he turned his attention to Judah. And by his own writings, he took over 46 fortified cities, destroying the walls, capturing the inhabitants, more than 200,000 prisoners he took, all the while tightening the noose around Jerusalem.

When Jerusalem was really the last of the big cities of Judah that was to be taken, the entire army was brought to bear on Jerusalem. We don’t know exactly how many this was, but it was probably something in excess of 200,000 soldiers surrounding the city of Jerusalem.

And then he sent some emissaries out to speak to the people of Jerusalem. Now Hezekiah, who’s the king, sends some of his own emissaries out in an effort to intercept these emissaries and say, “Just talk to us, and we’ll take it back to the king.”

But the Assyrians aren’t interested in that. They actually want to speak directly to the people of Jerusalem. And so they stand outside the wall and they begin to shout taunts. They say, “Come on out! Now’s the time to surrender. If you come now, we’ll give you fields. We’ll give you vineyards. We will make it okay by you. Don’t let Hezekiah deceive you. Is Hezekiah telling you that your God will fight for you? We’ve heard that so many times before. Every city, every nation that this army has come up against. Has there ever been a God big enough to fight the Assyrian army? No. Don’t let Hezekiah deceive you.”

Now Hezekiah had ordered the people not to respond. And so there’s this silence. But you can sense the terror that must have gripped this city as they looked out and just saw this massive sea of the greatest army of its day. Hezekiah gets word of this transaction, of this exchange. He gets it both orally and in writing. And so he rips his clothes, he puts on sackcloth, he goes to the temple, he lays it out before the Lord.

We don’t actually know if he does this because of great faith – he is commended for his faith – or if he’s just in a panic because frankly he’s got nowhere else to turn. There are no Babylonians to rescue him. No Egyptians to rescue him. No one else will come from Judah to relieve the siege. It is just him, his little garrison, and the vast Assyrian army.

And so he prays. He says, “Truly, o Lord. The kings of Assyria have laid waste the nations and their lands, and have hurled their gods into the fire, and they were destroyed. So now, O Lord, our God, save us. I pray you, save us from his hands so that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that you – you, O Lord – are God alone."

And after he prays this, Isaiah the prophet comes and gives God’s response. And he says, “I have heard your prayer about King Sennacherib and here is what I say. He shall not come into this city. He shall not shoot an arrow there, come before it with a shield, or cast up a siege ramp against it. By the way that he came, by the same he shall return. He shall not come into this city, says the Lord, for I will defend this city to save it for My own sake and for the sake of my servant David.” And this is God’s word to Hezekiah.

But it’s night time. It’s dark. They can’t see what’s happening out among the armies. They hear motion. They hear movement. But they don’t know where the troops are amassing under cover of darkness. They don’t know where the attack is going to come from. It is a bad night. It is a night of terror. And they are waiting for the morning.

The morning breaks and if it has been a very bad night, it turns out now it’s going to be a very good day. Because as they look over the walls, they discover to their total astonishment that the army of the Assyrians has been decimated. In fact, when they finally get out to see, they head count 185,000 Assyrian soldiers dead on the battlefield.

The remnant of the Assyrian army, presumably with their tails tucked between their legs, go scurrying back to Assyria and Jerusalem is saved. The only thing scripture tells us about this is that the angel of God went through the Assyrian camp. Jerusalem is saved. Hezekiah is saved. And most scholars believe that our Psalm for today, Psalm 46, is sung in celebration of this great victory. It’s a celebration of the victory of God over this mighty Assyrian army.

And you can hear little echoes of that in the Psalm – this notion of kingdoms tottering and nations being in an uproar, but God speaking and war ceasing, and bows being broken and shields being burned, and God being exalted. You can hear that. Psalm 46 is a song. And so you can imagine now the people of Jerusalem gathering together to sing in celebration. And this is what it sounds like. (I’m not singing.)

“God is our refuge and strength.
a very present help in trouble.
Therefore, we will not fear,
though the earth should change,
though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea;
though its waters roar and foam,
though the mountains tremble with its tumult.

There’s a river whose streams
make glad the city of God,
the holy habitation of the Most High.
God is in the midst of the city; it shall not be moved;
God will help it when the morning dawns.
The nations are in an uproar, the kingdoms totter;
God utters His voice, the earth melts.
The Lord of Hosts is with us;
the God of Jacob is our refuge.

Come! Behold the works of the Lord;
see what desolations He has brought on the earth.
He makes wars cease to the end of the earth;
He breaks the bow and shatters the spear;
He burns the shields with fire.

"Be still and know that I am God!
I am exalted among the nations,
I am exalted in the earth."
The Lord of Hosts is with us;
The God of Jacob is our refuge.”

Let’s pray.

God, thank you for the privilege of praying and reading this wonderful Psalm. Thank you that you have used this Psalm down through the ages. I pray that you would use it in our lives today, that it might become our prayer, our song to you. I pray in the next few moments that you would guide my tongue that I would say just the words that You want said this morning, and that all of us would have hearts that are ready to receive your word to us. For I pray this in Jesus’ name, Amen.

Well, this is a really great Psalm. I learned this week that it was actually Martin Luther’s favorite Psalm. It was – in case it isn’t obvious (it wasn’t to me) – the inspiration for that A Mighty Fortress is Our God hymn that we sang at the beginning of the service.

And as I was thinking about it, one of the reasons I think this Psalm is such a great Psalm is because it functions on so many different levels. It clearly speaks of God’s mighty victory over the Assyrians. It has been used to celebrate His victory many times in the past when God has intervened to save His people.

But if you read it, it also has a kind of cosmic feel that points to the future – there’s things like “earth melts”, “the waters foam”, and “wars cease to the end of the earth” – these sort of big images that are really in some ways - ways I think the Psalmist couldn’t possibly have known at the time that this was written - but some ways that point us to that great final victory that we celebrate and is described in the last chapters of Revelation. And if you put them alongsideside each other, these two passages kind of reverberate back and forth.

One thing I think that makes it clearer to see that is to understand how the Hebrews saw the sea. Not the rivers, but the sea. For the Hebrews, from a Hebrew cosmology, the sea was a place of chaos. It was where chaos prevailed. It was the opposite of order. God brought order but the sea was chaos.

In fact, if you go all the way back to the very beginning of the Bible to Genesis, the creation story, remember that before God creates anything it says the earth was without form, void, dark. But it says the waters were there because the Spirit of the Lord hovered over the waters. And in order to create the world after God makes light, the first thing He has to do is make space in the waters. And so He separates the waters and holds them at bay.

And even in His created order, the next thing He has to do is separate the waters there so that dry land will emerge, so that there can be plants and animals and ultimately humans that can flourish. And the picture that emerges is a picture of God holding back the waters of chaos so that there can be this creation that can flourish in its midst.

But here at the beginning of Psalm 46, at the first stanza, the sense is that the waters are getting the upper hand. They’re roaring. They’re foaming. Mountains that we used to think were so secure and stable, they’re shaking in the heart of the sea. It’s as if chaos was going to overcome God’s creation.

But when we get to the second stanza, we realize that from God’s perspective, even as great and mighty and terrifying as this looks, it’s not that big a deal. Sure, the nations are in an uproar. The kingdoms are a totter. But what stops it? Simply this – God utters His voice. That’s all. Everything melts away.

It’s kind of reminded me of the passage in Mark where Jesus is in the boat. And the storm comes. Jesus is sleeping in the boat. They’re out on the sea. Big storms. The disciples are like, “We’re gonna die!” They wake up Jesus. They say, “You don’t care. We’re gonna die!” You can just imagine Jesus kind of rolling his eyes. Oh boy. And saying very simply, “Be still” to the sea, and it settles down.

So that’s what comes out of Psalm 46, but it points ahead in a kind of way to Revelation, to the end, the final victory.

• In Psalm 46 the picture is God holding these waters at bay. But in the final victory in Revelation 21, we are told that the sea will be no more. No longer will we contend with the waters of chaos. The sea will be no more at the final victory.
  
• Psalm 46 talks about Jerusalem, the city that is being patched together and held together by Hezekiah and his little army. But in the final days, we talk about the New Jerusalem that comes down.
  
• Psalm 46 talks about streams making glad the city of God. But in Revelation 22, we talk about the river of life flowing through the city.
  
• Psalm 46 talks about God helping His people when the morning dawns. But in the final story, we see that dawn for the last time. In the end, we no longer live in the cycle of night and day. It will dawn and then it will be day, and then it will be day, forever.
  
• Psalm 46 talks about wars ceasing. But in the final picture there’s this sense in which not only have wars ceased, but death and mourning and tears and pain have all passed away.
  
• And so Psalm 46 not only celebrates God’s victory in the past but it hints at – it’s kind of an anticipatory celebration – for this great, final triumph of God that we will celebrate at the end of time.

But the other reason I think Psalm 46 is so helpful is that it actually speaks not just to the past and the future, but very much to the present. And down through history, this is a psalm that people have turned to in times of trouble.

And frankly you have to say that we are living now in times of trouble. I don’t think anybody who is halfway honest looking at our planet could say that wars have ceased to the ends of the world. There’s Iraq, and Afghanistan, Pakistan, Gaza, Sri Lanka, Columbia, Rwanda, Congo, Zimbabwe, Darfur, and the list goes on and on. It seems there are still plenty of bows and spears and shields out there working mayhem. It seems we are still living in that dark night. It seems like nations are in an uproar and kingdoms are tottering.

For many of us, I think the sense of being in troubled times is closer to home and has an economic flavor. Obviously we’re in a very serious economic recession. The unemployment rate in the country is the highest that it’s been in decades. Some people anticipate that it will get to 10%, meaning that 1 in every 10 people who needs a job won’t be able to get it.

The paper suggested that when the numbers actually come in for January, we’re going to see that ½ million additional people have now be added to the ranks of the unemployed. It seems like everyday this month Seattle Times’ big headlines – “This big company laid of this many people.” And this unemployment is working its way into our congregation, into the life of our people here. We are going to be and are struggling with not being able to find enough work.

There is of course the stock market. It didn’t have a particularly good 4 th quarter. And I read in the paper that January this year was literally the worst January in the history of the stock market. This impacts people’s ability to plan college savings, retirement savings, it has disrupted. And that, too, has entered into the life of this congregation.

Not as much in the Northwest but really throughout the United States, enormous numbers of people losing their homes. Foreclosures are up. Bank loans are down. Last week Margie and I went to hear Paul Crugman, who is a Nobel Laureate economist talking about our condition. And he was not a very positive kind of guy. Economics is the dismal science, but he’s like dismal of dismal. And he said, “Look. Economists all sort of talk about us coming out of this at some point, but frankly nobody can see any way that that will ever happen.”

Margie leaned over to me about half-way through this thing and said, “I don’t think I should have come tonight.”

These are troubled times. And it’s not just numbers and things like that. Because obviously as these things hit, then strains get put everywhere. Strains on marriages. Strains on families. Alcoholism rises. Domestic violence rises. Youth violence rises. When communities and civil societies are built around healthy economic basis and those begin to contract and fall apart, the whole society begins to fray at the edges.

These are troubled times. And so Psalm 46 is a psalm for these times. It’s a psalm for the times when it seems like the waters are roaring and foaming. And it’s a reminder that God is with us.

I want to end my time by giving you four words to hold onto that come out of this Psalm, or out of the circumstances around it.

The first is refuge. God is our refuge is how it starts. The God of Jacob is our refuge is how it ends. In the midst of these troubled times what we are invited to do is to take refuge in God.

The psalm, the poem, actually has an interesting back-and-forth. It says God comes into the midst of His people. God comes into the midst of the city. And then the people are invited to come into the midst of God.

There is this kind of back-and-forth – that we are invited to kind of curl under the arms of God to be safe. We come into refuge in God because God is safe. The refrain in this Psalm has 2 different phrases for God:

The Lord of Hosts is with us. The Lord of hosts is this picture of a God who’s a head of a mighty army of angels. It only took one angel of God to wipe out the entire Assyrian army, and our God is the head of a host of angels. Our God is imminently powerful enough to take care of us.

But in that same refrain he also goes on to say He’s also the God of Jacob. Not only is He powerful, but He’s personal. And frankly to call God of Jacob is to remind us that He is the God of all of us, regardless of how squirrely we actually are. Jacob is not a particularly attractive character in the Old Testament. He’s a trickster, a deceiver. He wrestles with God. You get the sense that he never quite gets it right with God. But still God says, “Not only am I the God of Abraham and Isaac, but I’m also the God of Jacob.

And so we have a God who is powerful, and a God who is personal. A God who has the strength to do what we need, and loves us enough to want to. And that makes Him a safe refuge.

Refuge.

So practically speaking, if we’re in times of trouble, what does it mean for us to take refuge in God?

Well, one thing it seems to me means that like Hezekiah we need to regularly be going to God, spreading out our situation in front of Him and praying and saying, “Help me. Save me.”

In another sense, it seems to me, is that we ought to be willing to do that to the body of Christ here. That is, to the church. God did not intend us to carry these troubles on our own. He invites us to bring them to His body. And that means that for those of us who are able within this body, we are being invited to be the hands and feet of God during this season, to reach out and provide refuge for those who are in trouble.

The first word, then, is refuge. The second word is observe. Pay attention. Verse 8 says, “Come. Behold the works of the Lord.”

I think one of the things that often happens when we’re in times of real trouble is we tend to think that we’re there alone. Even if we’re sort of trusting in God, the mental picture that sometimes happens is, “Right not in the darkness I’m here. Tomorrow God may come over the hill and rescue me. But I’m here alone.”

You remember in the Lord of the Rings that great scene where Gandolph brings the army down out of the hill to rescue them from siege. And the picture that we sometimes carry is “God will come.”

But that’s not the picture of Psalm 46. The picture of Psalm 46 is that even in the dark night of terror, God is in the midst of the city. God is present with us in the darkness even as we anticipate the rescue.

Observe.

So one of the reasons I think it’s important for us to observe and to pay attention is because it simply reminds us that God is with us. We believe that Jesus Christ died and that Jesus Christ was raised from the dead, the first fruits of resurrection life. And that since that moment, resurrection life has been seeping into our world, and we ought to expect to see this life – hints of it at least – everywhere we look.

Sometimes I think this is just as simple as creating a habit for yourself. It may be just as mechanical as putting a little post-it note on the corner of your computer monitor that simply says “Look” …just reminds you to look. Because when you see something that is beautiful, when you see an act of mercy, when you see an act of kindness, when you see a little bit of justice bubbling up some place, you are seeing God at work. And you can remember that God is with you.

So Refuge. Observe. Third word – cease.

Cease.

This whole psalm culminates in verse 10 – “Be still and know that I am God.” A number of translations do (I think) a better job of translating than this. They say, “Cease striving and know that I am God.” The word cease here literally could be translated let your hands hang limp. Let your hands hang limp at your side.

Elsewhere in the Old Testament this word is used to describe the condition of someone who is so paralyzed by fear that they can’t do anything. This sense of just complete helplessness. Let your hands hang limp.

I don’t know about you, but frankly for me, I am a person who is just wired to want to fix things. Wants to get things done. And so I’m not good at all at ceasing striving. In fact, I’ve learned that there are a number of kind of yellow flags that remind me when I’m not on target here. You may have your own, but here are some of the ones that remind me that I have not ceased striving.

• When I wake up morning after morning to an alarm clock, and I’m exhausted morning after morning.

• When I am having my quiet time and find myself glancing at the watch and to see how many more minutes are left before it’s time to go.

• Or on Sabbath, how many more hours before I can stop resting and get back to work.

• When I am, in terms of my own emotional states, finding myself fluctuating back-and-forth between panic (“I can’t do it”) and arrogance (“I did it”) – without much in between.

• Whenever the phone rings and my stomach gets tight out of fear that somebody is calling to ask me to do something more.

• Or the sense that when someone interrupts me it’s an annoyance rather than an opportunity.

• Or the disproportionate amount of anger and frustration when somebody doesn’t do what they’re supposed to do and thereby keeps me from getting done what I need to get done.

All of these are little signals to me that I am still in charge. I am still trying to make it happen. I still feel like I’m the one responsible to get it done. And God says, “Let your hands hang limp at your side.” Cease striving.

I’m not very good at it, but it seems to me a couple of things we might do here in this area, again very mechanical kinds of things.

• I find it helpful to at least stop and name it. That is, “Oh, look. Here I go again. Still striving as if it is all up to me.” Just to pause long enough to say it sometimes breaks the grip.
  
• The other thing that may be helpful, if it doesn’t seem to corny to you, is to develop a habit. Maybe something that sort of says I’ll clench my fists in those moments and then open them up and say “I’ll give this to you, God.” That could just be your little prayer in those moments. “Oh. There I go again. I give this to you, God.”

You might think that sitting there limp with our hands at our side that this is the ultimate picture of passivity. That somehow we’re all gonna go “okay God, You go do it, and we’ll sit around on the side”.

But interestingly, paradoxically, it’s exactly the opposite. It’s when we let our hands go limp – when we stop trying like Hezekiah to make our alliances with the Babylonians and the Egyptians and create our own little pool of water – when we stop trying to fix everything on our own that we are in the best condition to be used by God.

Because then God comes along and says, “Ah. I can fill you with My power, the power of the Holy Spirit. I can direct you in My direction toward My will. And I can, working through you, accomplish the work that I am going to accomplish. I can do it through you when you cease striving.”

So take refuge. Observe. Cease striving. And then the last word – Keep.

Keep.

I like this word because it has kind of a double play. Keep, as you may recall, is the most protected part of the fortified city. It’s the center place. It’s the place least likely to be captured. It’s the last place to go. In that sense it fits. But I’m using it here to essentially mean “keep the faith. Keep hoping.” It’s a sense of endurance.

There are going to be in times of trouble the Assyrians in our lives who are going to come to our gates and who are going to shout up to us, “Give up. Surrender. Don’t trust your God to get you out of this one. It’s not gonna happen. Give up.”

And sometimes as Christians, it seems to me that the only thing we can do is just stay out. There are different seasons of the Christian life. Sometimes there are seasons to be bold, seasons to take risks, seasons to reach out to your neighbors, to witness to your co-workers, to move overseas, seasons to change your life. But sometimes all we can do is just hang on. And it’s enough.

When I was in law school there was a friend of mine, actually he became a friend of mine there. His name was Steve. Steve was an English citizen and he had been invited to come to the United States by a rector of a local church, who had invited him to come and live in the rector’s house and do work in the church.

But when Steve got to the United States the rector changed his mind. He said, “Well, we don’t really need you, and I don’t want you living with us.” Steve didn’t have a visa. He didn’t have any money. He didn’t even have enough money to get home. He didn’t have any friends.

I don’t quite know how it happened, but in some way, somebody got word of this and allowed him to sleep at night on the floor of their vacant home, unheated in the middle of the New England winters. And I don’t know how Margie and I heard about this, but somehow we did. And so I remember driving up, looking to see if this was really true, and we found Steve shivering in a sleeping bag in this house, and we invited him to come live with us.

And he did for a few months and became a good friend. And I think I’ve told you this before and I do because it really has stuck with me. In those months that he was living with us he told me once. He said, “Jeff, when I was in those darkest moments, I couldn’t pray. At least I couldn’t pray like I used to pray.” He said, “The only thing that I could do every day was open the Episcopal prayer book, find the one paragraph prayer for the day, and then read it. That was all I could do. But it was enough. It was enough.” There’s times when we just hold on.

So the four words: refuge, observe, cease, keep. Kind of a cute little trick here to remember them…think of the first letter of each word – R.O.C.K. – rock. If we do these things, you will be building your house. We will be building our city on a rock. And though the waters roar and foam. Though the mighty institutions of our days shake in the heart of the sea, God will be with us. We will not be moved. The Lord of Hosts is with us. The God of Jacob is our refuge.

Let’s pray.

God, I just marvel and can’t even begin to come up with the words to thank You for all the ways that you meet us in this Psalm. For the ways that you are with us in those dark terrifying moments. For the ways in which you produce victory. For the ways in which you relieve us of this ultimate responsibility to get it all done. For the fact that it’s sometimes enough with you that we just hold on. I just thank you for your love for us, that it finds expression in so many different ways.

I do pray for us as a congregation that as we go through these difficult months ahead that we would be a congregation that puts its trust in you. That we would reach out and care for one another in these difficult times, but that underneath all of that we would know that we are being held and carried by You. And we give you great thanks. In Jesus’ name. Amen.