The Abiding Protection of God

Psalm 91. He who 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. You will not fear the terror of 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. You will only observe with your eyes and see the punishment of the wicked. If you make the most high your dwelling, even the Lord who is my refuge, then no harm will befall 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 upon 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 upon me and I will answer him. I will be with him in trouble. I will deliver him and honour him. With long life will I satisfy him and show him my salvation. Amen.

Well, this morning, as we've been giving God thanks, it is obviously true that we thank God for His protection over us. And for that reason, we are looking at this wonderful Psalm of trust and protection. Psalm 91. We know it is a poem. That's sort of the essence really of the psalms generally. They are poetry that God has inspired.

The poem itself gives every believer the assurance of God's protection, even among some of the most scariest of situations. His protection is supreme, the psalm says, and whoever finds himself covered by His powerful guardianship should feel a great sense of peace. If you have a quick look at the psalm, you'll see it's basically broken up into three sections. Firstly, in verses one and two, we find the truth of God's protection being stated. So he who dwells in the shelter of the most high will abide in the shadow of the almighty.

That is the statement. You are protected if you find yourself in God. Then the second passage, or the second section rather, is verses three to verse thirteen, and this is the application of that statement. This truth that has been stated is applied through a number of personal encouragements from the psalm writer. And then the final verses, fourteen to sixteen, we find God personally speaking to verify the truth of His protection.

So our God now speaks, and He makes the promise that He will protect. So these three distinct sections, I'm gonna argue, tell us something of the protection of God. Firstly, that it can be known. God's protection is known. Secondly, that it is felt.

And thirdly, that it is verified. So let's first see where God's protection is first made known. We see the truth being stated in verses one and two. The opening two verses gives us the main idea for the whole psalm. The person who trusts in God finds their protection in Him.

That first verse is beautifully written. He who dwells in the shelter of the most high will abide, will remain, will live in the shadow of the almighty. Now this verse is so beautifully constructed that some commentators believe that it was part of a liturgical saying, that it was part perhaps of a greater older psalm that we don't have anymore, which is now quoted and now in the rest of the psalm explained. It's almost like a sermon being preached on this one verse. Because everything, if you understand it, everything flows from this opening phrase, this opening verse.

Its emphasis is obviously on the idea of living under God's protection. Those who dwell in the Lord abide in His shadow and find protection there. I'm at home. A leader has now taken to playing chasey. We have a very long hallway, well, very long for a townhouse, long, where we have the front door and you walk through the hallway to get to the living area.

And the hallway is where the tickle monster lives. On the one side is the staircase and the first step is the safety. The rug in the living room is the other safety. And so the chasey game is between the stairs to the rug. As soon as her little bottom rests on those stairs, the tickle hungry monster can't grab her.

With all his might, Papa can't penetrate the power of the stairs. The image here in these opening verses is of God being a safe place. Not simply that God is a protector, but that in Him, remaining in Him, being found in Him, you find protection. He is a refuge, the psalm writer says. He is a fortress where no harm can find you.

And the thing that's different here than with Alida's stairs is that the Christian can abide there. To abide simply means to remain. And so in other words, unlike Alida who has to nervously traverse the danger of the hallway between her safe places, she needs to run down the gauntlet to go and get her sandwich and her juice. The Christian is always in the refuge of God. They are enshrouded.

They are covered by God's protection always. And so that is the opening truth being claimed. Anyone who has made God their shelter finds protection from Him. Then the psalm writer goes to explain how this truth looks or really is felt in reality. And so he applies this truth in a variety of different circumstances.

Verses three to verse thirteen, God protects you through the troubles of life. We see across the bulk of the psalm various examples of the types of trouble, the types of disasters, of dangers a person may experience in their life. Verses three to six, for example, represent the physical threats that every human being will experience. It's very hard for any normal human being to ward off these types of dangers. Whether you are rich or poor, strong or weak, there is not so much that we can do to safeguard ourselves from the schemes of evil people or the fowler's snare.

A fowler was a person who caught birds, and it's the idea here of evil schemes from people used to entrap us. Neither can we defend ourselves from disease referred to in the second half of verse three, the deadly pestilence, which is also referred to in verse six. Likewise, a physical threat in verse five is being defenceless against unexpected physical harm, things that can strike from the shadows of the night, the terror of the night, or even the unexpected arrow that falls from the sky in the middle of the day. Now these are all physical everyday threats, and it doesn't matter how wealthy you are or how poor you are, how well planned your life is or not, these things can happen to anyone. We are defenceless against them.

Then verses seven and eight, we see a military threat being used here. War was a genuine and constant threat for the Israelites in those days. So it may be purely reflecting the threat of a battle, but we know that the metaphor probably stretches to all sorts of battles in life. The image is pretty clear. There is a terrifying battle, and you are in the thick of it.

And there are people around you that are succumbing to this battle, that are dying in the midst of this battle. It's no surprise then that there are commentators who believe that the psalmist has in mind a spiritual battle, spiritual warfare that is raging around them, and that there are people that are losing themselves in the battle. Verse ten moves on to simply mention that there is a danger of evil that may befall you. This refers to the moral and spiritual evil that lurks around us all the time. Verse thirteen speaks of the threats of a lion and a snake.

And again, that could be literally referring to wild animals pouncing on people because three thousand years ago, you didn't have a gun or a land cruiser. So you could be walking around and from behind a bush, a lion literally pounces on you. A snake can jump up from a stone. But again, these are animals that strike unexpectedly. The threat is something that you have no defence against.

It is something that you cannot be ready for. And so across all these types of threats, we find that no matter how prepared you might be, it's delusional to think that you can insure against any one of these threats. You cannot defend against those who plot to harm you. You cannot avoid the threat of a cancer diagnosis. You can't secure yourself against a car crash.

You can't prevent a heart attack in the middle of the night. Now these are all everyday problems and troubles, and none of us are free from them. But then notice that even for the person who trusts in God, it is assumed that they are not removed from these threats. It's not assumed that they will, in some way, come into contact with them. They will meet the fowler's snare.

They will see and experience in some way the deadly pestilence. They will see the arrows. They will know the terrors of the night. They will know about the lions and the adders. The only difference is that God, according to the psalm, will deliver you, that he will cover you, that he will hold these things at a distance, that he even commands his angels to carry you over the threats.

In other words, the Christian doesn't avoid the troubles of life. God protects the Christian through them. God protects the Christian through these troubles. Notice that in the face of these threats, we are also given memorable metaphors of God's protection. Verse four pictures God as this mother bird covering her chicks under her wings.

Verses nine and ten, God is a tent, and we live under His canopy where no threat can come past the front door. Verses eleven and twelve picture God as an army general commanding, sending out His angels to protect His people in every way. And so the truth of verses one and two applied here in these verses is not of a believer being removed from danger, but one of God protecting him in the midst of the scariest troubles in life. Maybe you've noticed this about parents. Maybe you are a parent like this.

There's a watchful permissiveness in parenting. What I mean by that is this idea of allowing hardship in the life of your kids for good reason. It's not neglect. It's allowing them difficulty for long-term growth. I noticed earlier this week, Brendan posted on Facebook something of a proposal that the government has made to reduce school from five days to four.

Now, Phil and my wife Desi, they're all cheering for that as well. Carissa too. Four-day work week. It's awesome. I can guarantee you, I know who else is very excited about that.

The kids. And Brendan, in Brendan's way, gave this bottom line: toughen up. I don't know, Owen or Reese, if you share that same political persuasion. But Brendan makes a case that there is something that intentional thoughtful parents will sometimes do, and that is to allow hard things, even painful things, to happen for good reasons in the life of their children.

In a similar way, while the protection of God in these verses might seem as absolute, God says no evil will befall you, no plague will come near your tent. The truth is that the psalm writer is admitting that all these things are around the Christian all the time. Many, many times will a Christian recognise the good hand of God like we are doing today and we will say thank you, Lord. Thank you, Lord, for a remission. Thank you, Lord, for a home.

Thank you, Lord, for this work that is providing for me and my family. We will see the potential for disaster and we can recognise that it has not come into our house. It has not entered our tent. Evil has not befallen us. And so there is that situation where we can recognise that God has spared us from disaster, and to recognise that and to thank God for that is correct.

He has done it. God has spared us from those things, but then we also know that the lived reality of a Christian tells us that none of us are immune to disease. None of us are immune to danger or death. And so the message of hope from Psalm 91 isn't that we are immune, rather it says that nothing will touch me in life or in death that has not first passed the encircled hands of my God, and that is enough for us. And as long as I know that my trials are limited and approved by God, I can be content because I know that a loving Father has filtered every one of those troubles in my life so that even the painful things happen to me for good reason.

And then finally, we get to the final three verses of the psalm, and you'll notice that the voice of the speaker has changed. The one now speaking is God Himself. And here He gives the final verification of that claim made at the start of the psalm that I will indeed rescue the one who loves me. I will rescue the one who loves me, a truth that is verified. It doesn't take a brain surgeon.

It doesn't take a pastor or a theologian to see that this psalm is offering protection to the one who trusts in God. The psalm is about protection, about God's protection. That's not too difficult to understand. The difficulty of this psalm comes in believing it. There are two potential dangers when we read this psalm.

The first one is to doubt its claims and to believe that God can only be speaking here of His protection in some abstract general way. God's protection is only ever His general providences to us, that He makes it rain or shine in season, that He has given us laws that govern and guard life, that He causes us to exist and continue along, map out plans and so on. You could read this psalm and not believe that it's speaking of God's direct interventional grace. You could doubt that angels exist and that they can and do carry us over dangers. You can doubt that protection can come in the form of miraculous supernatural means.

And that would be a false and dangerous view to have of the psalm. Now, the psalm writer wants us to believe and to know that God offers astounding supernatural protection in interventional ways. The psalm is relational and personal, so it's not even speaking of the church at large. This is about you. The word "you" is all throughout it.

Your individual protection as a Christian who has found themselves under the shadow of God, our shelter, is directly linked to God who protects and provides for you in every way. The other danger is an opposite one. You may become so triumphalistic when you read this psalm that you believe that God is speaking literally of protection across every one of these metaphors. You may claim, therefore, that no disease will ever touch the Christian body, that you could be a soldier in battle literally, and you would survive even as all your platoon fell dead. You may even believe, as some people I've heard of say, that a Christian should be able to grab a snake, get bitten by that snake, and not be poisoned by its venom because we were made to trample on snakes.

In other words, you may believe everything in the psalm applies to us literalistically and always, and by doing so, you would struggle to believe that God allows any hardship, and that would be an equally wrong and dangerous way to read this psalm. How do I know this? Because Satan himself misapplied the psalm when tempting Jesus in the wilderness. Remember back in Luke 4, Satan's third temptation was to take Jesus to the top of the temple and quoting this psalm said, throw yourself down, Jesus, because if you truly are the son of God, then He will command His angels to catch you so that not even a stone will strike your foot. Satan quotes Psalm 91 to Jesus.

Satan is saying to Jesus, if this psalm applies to God's children, surely it must apply to the unique Son of God. He tries to trick Jesus with the same lie that he tricks many Christians with. God won't let anything bad happen to you, will He? So we actually know that a triumphalistic interpretation of some like Satan's is a temptation and a lie. Jesus rejects that interpretation.

What's the danger? Well, ask yourself the question. What happens in the heart of a Christian when something bad inevitably does happen and you thought Psalm 91 says it will never happen? What happens in the heart of the Christian then? He doubts that God exists or he believes that God doesn't care.

So how do we not discount, on the one hand, the promises of this psalm, which are real and true? How do we not reduce it to some vague statements about God's general goodwill towards us? And on the other hand, how do we not fall into the lies of Satan about a struggle-free life? How can we believe that God protects us in a profound way? How today, when your life is falling apart, can you believe that God is faithful to the Christian?

I think the greatest comfort of this psalm comes to us in these final verses when it is God Himself, God Himself. And we know this is God's word, all of it, but God Himself is speaking to us and He says this, verse fourteen: because he holds fast to me in love, I will deliver him. I will protect him because he knows my name. When he calls to me, I will answer him.

I will be with him in trouble. I will rescue him and honour him. With a long life, I will satisfy him and show him my salvation. You can see that the motivational weight of the psalm, although beautifully stated up the front, it really lies at the bottom. It's because God personally promises His protection that we, the reader, are moved to trust Him for it.

And isn't that true for the human heart? It's one thing to be told the truth. It's another thing for us to be shown it. Think about all the images and the metaphors God has used in this psalm to speak of His protection. He is like a home that we find shelter in.

He is like a bird who covers us under His wings. He is a tent that shelters us from evil. And these are all metaphors of being in something, isn't it? Being covered up by something. Now think ahead to the New Testament.

What is the single most repeated phrase across the New Testament? Being in Christ. Being in Christ. Here in Psalm 91, we are told about this mysterious dynamic of being in God. But when it comes to Jesus, this idea becomes the normative standard by which we must see ourselves.

We are all in Christ. So much so that Colossians 3:3 says, you have died, your life is hidden with Christ in God. Romans 8:1, famously, there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are what? In Christ. The astounding claim of Psalm 91 isn't that we are removed from suffering, it's that you and I can be in God.

When the New Testament comes, this truth is made all the more clear. It is in Christ we receive God's protection, and that is a genuine protection. And yet it's a protection that also comes with a surprise. You are protected, Jesus says, even though you may suffer. Jesus gave this puzzling statement to His disciples once.

Luke 21:16-18. He said to them, you will be delivered up even by parents and brothers and relatives and friends, and some of you they will put to death. You will be hated by all for my name's sake, but not a hair of your head will perish. By your endurance, you will gain your lives. The thing that is so puzzling is how can the followers of Jesus be put to death and yet not a single hair on their head will perish?

How can you die, Jesus says, but by endurance, gain your life? Jesus is saying here that the Christian life won't be free from suffering. In fact, you can cautiously expect it to happen. But even when you suffer, He says, you are safe. Even while you hurt, you can be comforted.

Yes, you will die, but not a hair on your head will perish. Why? Because everything that happens to you has had to go through Christ. The God who does not let a single hair on our head fall to the ground without His say so is guarding you. And if you dwell in Him, if you abide in Him, if you hold fast to Him and call on Him, He will answer.

He will protect. He will rescue. Because everything that happens to you has already happened to Him. Remember on the way to the cross, how at one point Jesus looked over Jerusalem and He cried out. He said, oh, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, that you would only allow me to cover your children as a hen covers her young, but you would not allow me to.

Jesus said that, and He is echoing this psalm. It's that image in verse four of the mother hen. And what does it mean for Jesus to be like this mother hen? It means we have a substitute. That little baby bird that runs under the wings of the mother bird, what happens?

Well, a predator has to go through the mum to get to that bird. And Jesus wants to cover the people of Jerusalem under His wings so that the attacks of God's wrath would fall on Him rather than them. And that is what Christ offers us, to those who find themselves in Him, that through His substitutionary work on the cross, we may rest in His tent. Sheltered by His shadow, refuged under His wings, He offers you protection from the worst possible fate, suffering that lasts eternally. And yet even as He saves us from our greatest fear, He pours out His active present Spirit to assure us that He also can and does protect us from the fowl snare, that He protects us from the deadly pestilence, He protects us from the terrors of the night, the arrows of the day, not by luck, not by vague good fortune, not even, certainly not by good planning.

He protects us because He loves us. Nothing happens to us without passing through His encircled hands. In other words, our life turns out for the better, being in Him rather than not being in Him. And that is the truth you can take to the bank. And so Psalm 91, in conclusion, tells us that God's protection is firstly known.

It is a truth available, able to be understood by everyone. Secondly, that His protection is felt across the many possible threats in our lives where we can trust Him. And finally, He verifies His protection Himself, and this is seen nowhere clearer than in the Lord Jesus Christ who has become our abode. So friends, let Psalm 91 speak to you this morning. It is the one who holds fast to Christ in love.

It is the one who knows and calls upon His glorious name. It is the one who dwells in His shelter that He will satisfy with a long life, even an eternal life. It is the one who knows Jesus Christ who receives His salvation. To the praise of His wondrous name, to all who are found in Him. Let's pray.

We thank you, Lord, that you have guarded Open House Church for these eleven months of this year. God, you are more faithful than we say. You are more faithful to us than we acknowledge. There are arrows that you have protected us from this year that we have no idea about. There are terrors in the night that we have avoided, that flashed across our lives so quickly that we haven't been able to have a second look to thank you and to acknowledge your protection over us.

Lord, every day, we are able to trample on the lion and the serpent, even Satan the serpent Himself because we are found in Christ. So we thank you, Lord, that because we love you, because we hold fast to you in love, You offer us your protection and you give us a long life, an eternal life because of your great salvation in Jesus Christ. May we know in every part of our hearts that we are yours, that you are ours, and that we remain and abide and find shelter in you. Amen.