The Lord’s Day Evening

January 25, 2009

“Hymns of the Faith (7):

Psalm 46

A Mighty Fortress Is Our God”

Dr. J. Ligon Duncan III

Please be seated. As you’re turning in your Bibles to Psalm 46, let me apologize. That’s one of those hymns that you should never ever sing less than all the stanzas to, because as you already can tell – some of you have sung that hymn hundreds of times – it’s a story. The whole hymn is a story. It’s a connected story. And this is like the sequel, you know, where at the moment of truth the movie ends and you have to wait three years until the resolution comes out. Because when you get to stanza four, you’re right there at the resolution of what’s been building all the way since the middle of the first stanza. So it all hangs together. It’s one of those hymns you really have to sing altogether.

      Tonight, we are in Psalm 46 and tonight, just like this morning, we’re back in trouble again! But it’s trouble in which we can confidently celebrate divine support in the midst of the most trying times. In fact, A Mighty Fortress Is Our God and Psalm 46 really are the perfect complement to the thrust of the message that we learned from Luke 2:1-7 this morning: What do you sing when you’re at one of those points in life when you have heard God’s promise to you (“I’ll never leave you or forsake you”), and then you find yourself in circumstances that you never ever anticipated, in which your confidence is being shaken. What do you say? What do you pray? What do you sing? Well, Psalm 46 gives you the words. Psalm 46 in Luther’s beautiful, sort of gospel paraphrase, gives you the words to pray back to God and to say to yourself in those trying times.

      Let me point you to three scenes in this Psalm, because it’s almost like an art gallery with three related pictures hanging side by side; or, it’s like a short film in which three very different scenes are displayed to illustrate a point. Or maybe you could use the analogy it’s like a play with three acts in it; three scenes in Psalm 46.

      First, in verses 1-3, you have a picture of God’s power over nature. Various cataclysmic natural forces are described in verses 1-3, and especially there is the picture of a cataclysmic earthquake and perhaps a tidal wave accompanying that earthquake which is described in verses 1-3.

      Then you have in verses 4-7 another scene, a totally different picture. You’ve moved from an earthquake and a tidal wave to the picture of a city besieged by attackers, and it’s a picture of God’s power over all those who will attack His people. It’s a city engulfed by an innumerable hoard of its enemies. [For Tolkien fans out there, think of Helm’s Deep.]

      Then in verses 8-11, the scene changes again. Now the city besieged, the field of battle is empty. It’s a picture of a battlefield aftermath in which there is nothing left but the desolation of God’s enemies. [Again, if you’re a  Tolkien fan, think to the picture of …you know, the Forest of Fangorn has come to Helm’s Deep, and there’s nothing left after the Great Trees have taken care of even the carcasses of the enemies of Rohan.] It’s a picture here in verses 8-11 of a battlefield in which nothing but the bodies of God’s vanquished enemies are left, and that’s a picture of God’s power over the whole warring world.

      Now why are those pictures there? Because the psalmist conceives of the Christian life as one long fight. And when you’re in the fight, you get tired. When you get tired, you need to have perspective given to you that you can’t gain from your circumstances, and that perspective comes from the power of God, in contrast to your own tiredness. You’re already feeling your finitude and weakness, so you need to contemplate the power of God and the end of God’s enemies and yours. And that’s exactly what Psalm 46 points you to. So when you’re in that place where you want to believe that He’ll never leave you or forsake you, but you’re in circumstances that cause your mind to go numb and your eyes to go dark, and you can’t see light at the end of the tunnel – Psalm 46. Let’s pray.

      Heavenly Father, this is Your word, and we need it. We feel ourselves weary pilgrims sometimes. We feel ourselves weak warriors, tired from battle, and we need Your strength. And we need the hope that only Your certain victory gives, and so we turn with desperation and expectation to Psalm 46. By Your Spirit, help us get the point. Illumine our hearts as we hear Your word both read and proclaimed. This we ask in Jesus’ name. Amen.

“TO THE CHOIRMASTER. OF THE SONS OF KORAH.

ACCORDING TO ALAMOTH. A SONG.

“God is our refuge and strength,

A very present help in trouble.

Therefore we will not fear though the earth gives way,

Though the mountains be moved into the heart of the sea,

Though its waters roar and foam,

Though the mountains tremble at its swelling.    SELAH.

“There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God,

The holy habitation of the Most High.

God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved;

God will help her when morning dawns.

The nations rage, the kingdoms totter;

He utters His voice, the earth melts.

The Lord of hosts is with us;

The God of Jacob is our fortress.          SELAH.

“Come, behold the works of the Lord,

How He has brought desolations on the earth.

He makes wars cease to the end of the earth;

He breaks the bow and shatters the spear;

He burns the chariots with fire.

‘Be still, 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 fortress.    SELAH.”

Amen. Thus ends this reading of God’s holy, inspired, and inerrant word. May He write its eternal truth upon all our hearts.

      Horatius Bonar, who did a book of almost mystical meditations on the Psalms, says of this one:

            “Before the dawn of that Day, the Day of the Bridegroom and bride, the Day of the marriage feast of the Lamb, before the dawn of that Day, earth shall quake with commotions, wars, rumors of wars, earthquakes, famines, pestilence – all combining to make men perplexed. But here [Psalm 46]…here we find the same Mighty One giving strength to His own in these perilous times.”

      In other words, that’s where we live. The world, the fallen world in which we live is filled with commotions and wars and rumors of wars, and earthquakes and famine and pestilence. You can go to Paul’s list in Romans 8…death, persecution, nakedness, peril and sword, height, depth, and every other created being. And Psalm 46 says in the midst of all those circumstances, the Mighty One is there strengthening His people.

      As we look at the three scenes in this Psalm – very briefly tonight, because I want to leave us enough time to look at Luther’s paraphrase of it – as we look at the three scenes of this Psalm very briefly tonight, I want you to see three truths that are given to comfort us, and the first one is based on the scene in verses 1-3.

            This is a picture of the challenges facing the people of God in this fallen world. A cataclysmic earthquake and tidal wave in which the whole world is unmade – that’s the picture. And what does the picture teach us? God can be trusted when the whole world goes crazy…God can be trusted when the whole world goes crazy. The psalmist is reminding us here of God’s power to protect us against anything by showing our safety in the midst of the most violent upheaval of nature. The upheaval is a picture of anything – of everything – that you could possibly face in this world as a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ in a world that is aligned against you, arrayed against you – the world, the flesh and the devil all conspiring to undo you. That’s the picture of the mountains slipping into the sea and the earth shifting under your feet, and the waters roaring and foaming, and the mountains trembling at the sight of the onrushing sea. Those are your problems.

      But the opening word of this section is that “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in time of trouble. Therefore we will not fear….” So it’s the picture of your worst nightmare, but in the context of the declaration that God will preserve you in your worst nightmare.

      Then the scene changes. Look at verses 4-7. There’s another picture of the challenges facing the people of God in a fallen world. Now it’s a city engulfed by an almost innumerable hoard of enemies, and the psalmist is reminding us here of God’s power to protect us against anything. And he does that by showing the serenity of the city of God in the midst of a massive siege. What’s the point? When we are surrounded by our enemies, we are as secure as if we were around the celestial throne of God in glory, and I love how often that is pictured in Christian hymns. Have you ever thought about the way that hymns pick up that particular truth? Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken…one of my favorite hymns…you remember that line from Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken which goes “…with salvation’s walls surrounded, thou may’st smile at all thy foes.” What a picture that is! You’re on the parapet surrounded by all the combined enemies of God, and you’re just smiling down, because you are invulnerable when God dwells in the midst of the city of God and you are in the city of God.

      Or, it reminds you of II Kings 6:16, doesn’t it? Elisha, with the armies of his enemies encircling him, and his poor trembling servant desperate to know why Elisha is so calm:

“Do you not know that those who are with us are more than those who are with our enemies? Lord, open his eyes.”

And then suddenly the servant sees legions of angels between them and their enemies.

      The same themes are stressed in We Rest On Thee, or It is Well With My Soul, or Be Still, My Soul, or If Thou But Suffer God to Guide Thee. The point is this, that when we are surrounded by our enemies we are as secure as if we were around the celestial throne of glory.

      Then the scene changes one more time – verses 8-11. The final picture is a future picture.  The future picture has the battle over; the battle’s done. How’s it going to turn out? Well, the final picture shows the desolation of all God’s enemies and all your enemies. This is picturing the time when the challenges that now face the people of God in this fallen world are ended. And what’s the result? Well, it’s the two-word summarization of the book of Revelation: We win. There it is. What’s Revelation about? We win.  God wins. And the psalmist is reminding us here of God’s power to protect us against anything by showing us His complete victory over all the forces that are arrayed against us. ‘Let Me show you,’ He says, ‘how it turns out, so that when you’re in the midst of the raging battle…’ [and isn’t this the picture of the beautiful hymn by William Walsham How, For All the Saints?...same picture here] ‘…Let Me show you how it ends.’

      Now, Martin Luther picks up on this hymn, and it’s no wonder that very often when his trembling friend and assistant, Philip Melanchthon, would be frightened of the forces arrayed against them, he would say, “Come, Philip! Let us sing the Forty-sixth.” No wonder.

      Well, let’s look at how Martin Luther renders this great hymn. I’ve given you a sheet that has Luther’s original German on one side, and then a somewhat literal rendering of it that was done in an edition of Luther’s hymns published by the Charles Scribner Company at the end of the nineteenth century. I don’t know who actually did the translation on this. I haven’t been able to track that down, but it was published in 1883, and it gives you a feel for the flow of Luther’s poetry that is a little bit better than the Frederick Hedge translation. But I must say that the Frederick Hedge translation that we sing in our Trinity Hymnal, and which is traditional in non-Lutheran English-speaking congregations in the Protestant world, is beautiful, beautiful poetry. I love the poetry. There are things that I wouldn’t want to lose there.

      But look at what Luther does. He picks up the image of God as our fortress out of Psalm 46 and that first picture, and in the second scene as well…God as our fortress. And he says that He is our helper  “amid the flood of mortal ills prevailing.” So there he’s picking up on the scenes from 1 and 2. Mortal ills that are prevailing are pictured both by the earthquakes in scene one, and by the battlefield imagery of scene two.

      But then Luther does something very interesting at the end of stanza one. He says, “For still our ancient foe doth seek to work us woe.” Now, hold on! Where’s the devil in Psalm 46? Well, he’s not there explicitly, but what Luther is reminding us is that in the calamities of the believer’s life, we must always be mindful that our oldest enemy seeks to undo us. Whereas God seeks us to be blessed and built up and matured, and grown in grace and in faith in the calamities of life, the old enemy longs for us to be undone. Luther is awakening our eyes to a spiritual reality that’s going on in our calamities. That is so important for us to understand, my friends.  Even when the diagnosis is purely medical, even when the circumstance is purely relational, even when the context of our struggle is legal, we must always realize that the old enemy wants to use the medical, and wants to use the relational, and wants to use the legal to destroy us, and Luther is opening our eyes to that.

      Anne and I, when we were not married very long, were over at a colleague’s house, and in the course of the conversation we started talking about how much a senior colleague of mine and friend of ours had meant to us. And this senior colleague that we were talking about (his name I will not mention because so many of you will know who that is) had a way of always looking at the world through spiritual eyes and making the unseen world of spiritual reality as real as if you were…as if it were the chair that you are sitting in or the table that you were sitting at, or the pew that you’re in now. You could just feel spiritual reality, though you couldn’t see it, when talking with this friend. And when we mentioned this friend, this couple that we were supping with laughed and said, “Well, has the devil been after him lately?” It was a light-hearted remark, but it was directed because this person was constantly talking about the schemes of the evil one against us and against our families. And frankly, I don’t think it was a pathology. I think it was a deliberate, biblical, spiritual posture that this senior colleague of mine took. He looks at the world through spiritual lenses and he recognizes there’s a great battle on, and that no matter whether our circumstances are primarily legal or relational or medical, there is a spiritual dimension that we dare not forget. And here Luther reminds us of that:

“…Our ancient foe seeks to work us woe;

His craft and power are great;

And armed with cruel hate,

On earth is not his equal.”

And that’s why in those medical circumstances you want more than the doctor on your side. And in those relational circumstances, you want more than your counselor on your side. And in those legal circumstances, you want more than your lawyer on your side. You need Someone else.

      Well, that leads you into the second stanza: “Did we in our own strength confide….” What would be the result? We would lose. All you have to do in the circumstances of life is resort to human power to lose. Why? Because “on earth is not his equal”!

      “Were not the right Man on our side….” Here I love [look at the literal translation]… “God Himself has elected” [has chosen] the right Man. He has appointed and anointed, He has decreed and provided a Messiah. Who is He? Christ Jesus, the Lord of Sabaoth, the Lord of hosts. Now all the language of Psalm 46 about the Lord of hosts is applied to whom? Jesus Christ, who is the right Man. It turns out that the right Man on your side is God, in the flesh, Almighty.

      And He – I love the language of the last line of Luther’s second stanza – He will always “hold the field.” When He’s on the field, He’ll always hold the field. When the battle is over and the smoke clears, He’ll still be standing. You remember the old westerns, when the shootout happens and the smoke is thick, and you’re wondering, “Who won? Who won?” and the smoke clears and the good guy in the white hat is still standing. There’s Luther. When this battle’s over and the smoke clears, He’s still standing.

      Third stanza:

“And though this world with devils filled,

Should threaten to undo us,

We will not fear, for God hath willed

His truth to triumph through us:

The Prince of Darkness grim,

We tremble not for him;

His rage we can endure,

For lo, his doom is sure,

One little word shall fell him.”

I love the language of the literal translation, don’t you?

“He can harm us none,

He’s judged; the deed is done;

One little word can fell him.”

      And this is why it’s so difficult not to go on and sing that fourth stanza, because the words talk about in the fourth stanza – Das Wort – “that Word…the Word” is above all earthly powers, no thanks to them.

      Now here’s one place where we miss in our English translation a beautiful thing that Luther says in the third line of the fourth stanza. Who is it who’s beside us on the field of battle? The Word who is above all earthly powers. He’s not back at command center saying, “Go on, do good, move there, go over there; it will be fine.” He’s right there beside us on the battlefield. He’s God for us, and He’s also God with us. Luther beautifully draws attention to that, and you just can’t quite squeeze it into the Frederick Hedge English translation, so you miss it. So when you sing it the next time, just remember while the Word is abiding—all earthly powers, no thanks to them, abideth—that He’s also right next to your side. Wherever you are right now in the field of conflict…right by your side.

      And then in that more literal rendering,

“He’s by our side upon the plain

            with His good gifts and Spirit.”

Now, I think that helps you too, because when you sing “the Spirit and the gifts are ours,” you need to remember it’s His Spirit and His gifts that He’s freely given you, not just “the spirit and the gifts.” It’s His Spirit and His gifts, gifts that He gives to you. Just like Brian was talking about tonight, He gives good gifts. And what better gift to give than the Spirit? [We couldn’t have planned that one if we had tried!]

      Now here again, look at the literal rendering. Therefore, if they take our life, our goods, our reputation, our children, or our wife…they can take them all. And still they’ve won what? They’ve won nothing. Because God’s kingdom never ends.

      Now what an incredible Christian spiritual application! It’s really not a rendering of Psalm 46 so much as it is a biblical spiritual meditation on the truth of Psalm 46. Luther locks in on the fact that Psalm 46 is about encouraging believers. He relates it to the person of Jesus Christ. He puts us in the context of the spiritual battle which we’re fighting against the world and the flesh and the devil. And then he makes us mindful that in the calamities and in the circumstances of life in which we find ourselves when we can’t see what God is doing, it’s not that God says in those circumstances you won’t lose your life, you won’t lost your goods, you won’t lose your reputation, you won’t lose your children, you won’t lose your life. God doesn’t say that. God says you may lose them all, but it still won’t matter because you’ve got Me. And you won’t lose Me, because I won’t lose you. And if you lose your life for My sake, I’ll give you more life than you’ve ever dreamed of.

      It’s no wonder that those brave Lutherans, and the Moravians after them, were ready to give everything up for Jesus, because they understood Psalm 46. May God grant that we understand Psalm 46.

      Let’s pray. Would you stand and receive God’s blessing.

      O Lord, how we need this word. Press it home by Your Spirit till we believe it and live it, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Peace be to the brethren, and love with faith, from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, until the day break and the shadows flee away.