Don’t Move!

This sermon can be watched or listened to at www.templebaptistchurch.ca!

“Don’t move!”Those words can mean either rescue or arrest. If a friend says to you “Don’t move! There is a spider on your back,” then you are being rescued. You are actually thankful for the words “Don’t move!” But if a police officer with a pointed gun at you says, “Don’t move!” then you are about to be arrested and are probably not so thankful.

Tonight, I believe God is saying to us, “Don’t move!” from Psalm 46! These two words – Don’t move! – may be both our rescue and arrest. God may be placing us in protective custody, just like the 11 children we heard about this week in New Mexico who were rescued by authorities from the squalor of a rural compound where they were being trained to commit mass school shootings.[1]  The words “Don’t move!” meant that the kids were both stopped and saved at the same time. God is doing the same with us. He is both stopping us from harming ourselves and others and He is saving us from the constant threat of the enemy of our souls. Please turn in your Bibles to Psalm 46! Read Psalm 46!

I was talking to somebody recently who was about to quit their job because they were so busy they didn’t have any time with their family. They were constantly on the move. I think that there are many of us who can relate. The world is spinning like a hamster wheel and we can never keep up. Psalm 46 wants to stop that mindset and wants us to cease from striving. Here is the summary of Psalm 46: Since God doesn’t move, but makes things move, don’t move!I will say that again: Since God doesn’t move, but makes things move, don’t move! This summary conveys the three sections of the Psalm! Section 1 beings verses 1-3; Section 2 being verses 4-7 and Section 3 being verses 8-11.

Before I demonstrate this summary from the verses in Psalm 46, let’s give you some background. If you notice in your Bibles who was credited for writing Psalm 46, many of your Bibles will say the “Sons of Korah.” Who were the sons of Korah? Let’s start with Korah himself before we get to the sons of Korah! Recall Numbers 16! Numbers 16:1 records, “Now Korah the son of Izhar, the son of Kohath, the son of Levi, with Dathan and Abiram, the sons of Eliab, and On the son of Peleth, sons of Reuben, took action.”In other words, they were on the move! What did they do? Numbers 16:2-3 tells us, “and they rose up before Moses, together with some of the sons of Israel, two hundred and fifty leaders of the congregation, chosen in the assembly, men of renown. They assembled together against Moses and Aaron and said to them, ‘You have gone far enough, for all the congregations are holy, every one of them, and the LORD is in their midst; so why do you exalt yourselves above the assembly of the Lord?”Notice the accusation by Korah is that Moses and Aaron are lording it over God’s people. In our day, we have so valued equality that we have become unaware of our own shortcomings and not appreciative of the protective covering provided by the authorities and leaders God has put over us. Besides, if we go back to Exodus 3 we will discover that Moses tried to refuse the job of being leader of the Israelites. Moses did not put himself above the assembly of the Lord. Even in this story when Korah rises up against Moses, Moses goes down and falls on his face in humility as Numbers 16:4 describes. Can you imagine that? Korah and the other insurrectionists accuse Moses of pride and lording his leadership over them. And what was his response? To fall on his face and appeal to the Lord! No wonder why Moses is called most humble man on the face of the earth at the time (Numbers 12:3).  So Korah and the other insurrectionist leaders were totally misguided and not dealing with reality.

However, God took Korah’s complaint serious! What was equivalent to a gunfight at high noon in an old Western movie took place. Except this time there were no bullets shot and it wasn’t Moses vs. Korah, but God vs. Korah. God takes up the cause of His humble leaders.Korah was instructed as a Levite to take up his censer of fire and bring it before all the assembly of people and more importantly, to bring it before the Lord. Numbers 16:19 summarizes the scene, “Thus Korah assembled all the congregation against them at the doorway of the tent of meeting. And the glory of the Lord appeared to all the congregation.” God was on the move! Numbers 16:20 records God’s next move, “Then the Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron, saying, ‘Separate yourselves from among this congregation that I may consume them instantly.’” Can you picture it? Moses and Aaron as well as the rest of the Israelites did some slide steps away from Korah and his group of rebels. Why? In a contest to see whose fire was pleasing to the Lord, Moses and Aaron’s fire won hands down. Korah lost! You may have heard the phrase, “You need to swallow your pride!” In Korah’s case, he literally got swallowed up, pride and all! Numbers 16:28-33 tells the story in vivid detail, “²⁸ Moses said, “By this you shall know that the Lord has sent me to do all these deeds; for this is not my doing. ²⁹ If these men die the death of all men or if they suffer the fate of all men, then the Lord has not sent me. ³⁰ But if the Lordbrings about an entirely new thing and the ground opens its mouth and swallows them up with all that is theirs, and they descend alive into Sheol, then you will understand that these men have spurned the Lord.”³¹ As he finished speaking all these words, the ground that was under them split open; ³² and the earth opened its mouth and swallowed them up, and their households, and all the men who belonged to Korah with their possessions. ³³ So they and all that belonged to them went down alive to Sheol; and the earth closed over them, and they perished from the midst of the assembly.”

So this is the background to Psalm 46. The Sons of Korah may have been descendants of Korah who, unlike their father, turned to God. “Twelve psalms (Psalms 42-49, 84, 87) are ascribed to this Levitical family, descendants of the rebel, whose children were spared. One part of this family became the temple doorkeepers and guardians (1 Chronicles 9:17ff), another part were the singers and musicians of the temple choir found under David.”[2]That is a great encouragement to those who may have come from a family who does not fear the Lord. You may think that your family can’t be redeemed. A family member far from God may come to mind right now. Please remember that the arm of the Lord is not to short to save. What I love the most about Psalm 46 is that the family of the rebel has a “defiant tone”[3]against the raging world. Let me read Psalm 46 once again now that you know who wrote it. Read Psalm 46 again from the ESV!

Did you catch the allusion in verse 2 that “though the earth ‘give way’” (NIV, ESV), the sons of Korah will not fear? The earth beneath their rebel father’s feet gave way, but they are unshakable. Their rebel father did not fear the Lord, but his sons did learn from their father’s failure and feared the Lord.

My friends, God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in times of trouble. When the foundations shake around us, we just need to look to God for help. He is ALWAYS there for us! He doesn’t move! In the words of the song, You are God Alone, “He is unchangeable! He is unshakable! He is unstoppable! That’s what You are!” speaking of the Lord! The world may be stormy, torrents of water may threaten us like the two men caught in the elevator in Toronto this week after flooding in the downtown core, or we may have the unsettling feeling of an earthquake, God is our solid refuge and strength. I still remember the first day of my sabbatical in the summer of 2010. I was laying down for a nap and all of a sudden, I felt the bed shake and the walls move. At that moment I didn’t move. Enough things were moving. God was reminding me that He was my refuge and strength. It was a Selah moment. A time to hit the pause button and reflect on God’s power! Ontario had experienced a small earth quake and I thought it was appropriate because it was the start of a summer of God right-sizing me!

This is why since God doesn’t move, but makes things move, don’t move! Creation may change, and the earth give way, solid mountains may slip into the sea like the volcanoes spewing rivers of lava in Hawaii, but God’s character and attributes never change. He is the place of security and this brings cheer to us. This is what the Sons of Korah write in Psalm 46:4, “There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy dwelling places of the Most High.” What is another name for the city of God? Jerusalem! “Jerusalem became the spiritual centre of a nation scattered among all the nations.”[4]In this section, we see the Israelite people finding great solace in the fact that the Lord was a fortress in the midst of Jerusalem. The nations were in uproar and still are. Canada vs. Saudi Arabia! The U.S. vs. North Korea! The U.S. vs. China! Israel vs. the rest of the world! But all the kingdoms totter at the voice the Lord (v. 6). No one can stand up against our God!

Now some of you might be thinking that this Psalm was just for the Jews and finding help from God when He dwelt in Jerusalem. However, I believe we Christians can still take the principles and promises for us. We can declare Psalm 46:7, “The Lord of hosts (Lord Sabbaoth) is with us; the God of Jacob is our stronghold.” (By the way, this is the Psalm that Martin Luther had in mind when he penned his most famous hymn A Mighty Fortress is our God![5]) Why can we adopt such language for our own? Because Jesus promised us, “tonever leave us nor forsake us and that He would be with us until the end of the age” (Matthew 28:20). Again this is a Selah moment. You need to reflect on this truth. Whole groups of people, nations, may be against you, but if God is for us, who can be against us? I had to remind myself this week that God was with me and I was doing what He wanted and if nobody was pleased but Him, I was doing the right thing. We just need to remember that since God doesn’t move, but makes things move, don’t move! Don’t take action; let Him do it!

And He will! Notice this final section of the Psalm! Verse 8-9 sets the tone, “Come, behold the works of the LORD, who has wrought desolations in the earth. He makes war to cease to the end of the earth; he breaks the bow and cuts the spear in two; he burns the chariots with fire.” There may be sabre-rattling, wars and rumours of war, but it is God who allows the selfishness of the human heart and watches one nation fights against another nation. He is doing so to show the futility of power-mongering and for people to turn to Him. A case in point is the many Muslims who have turned to faith in Jesus Christ because of ISIS. In fact, listen to these amazing stats from David Garrison, “By the close of the 20^thCentury, 1368 years after the death of Muhammad, there had been a total of 13 movements of Muslims. But in only the first 12 years of the 21^stcentury, an additional 69 movements to Christ of at least 1,000 baptized Muslim-background believers or 100 new worshiping fellowships have appeared.”[6]What happened at the turn of this millennium? 911! Radical Islam has been exposed as advocating violence. Whereas radical Christianity has been revealed as advocating peace, love and hope!

God is on the move! He is making things move in this world. Don’t lose heart! He can do the most difficult thing and that is to move the hearts of people back to Himself! Is He moving you back to Himself as well? This is the command in verse 10! Cease striving! I like how the KJV, NIV and ESV translates verse 10 as “Be still and know that I am God!” Now as Bible Scholar Gerald Wilson says, “’Be still’ does not mean to be quiet or calm as much as it means to stop what you have been doing and be still.”[7]“God’s demand – ‘Cease! Desist!’ (or perhaps the military counterpart ‘Attention!’) – calls combatants to stop their fighting and pay attention.”[8]In other words, “Don’t Move,” God says, “I am trying to stop you from warring, stop you from giving way to fear and anxiety and I am trying to rescue you from the dangers from within and from without.”

The really neat thing about this command, which is one word in the original Hebrew, is that it is the root word shabat, which is the word for Sabbath! I love what Stephen Smithsays in the best definition of Sabbath I have ever read, “Sabbath is the practice of being available to God by becoming unavailable to the world.”[9]You and I need to practice this Sabbath again, not in a legalistic way, but in order to be available to God. As Smith goes on to say, “Everyone needs a Sabbath if they want a soul that can recover from the violence of this world.”[10]This is why I am starting to recover the Sabbath in my life. Now I’m not talking about your typical day off where you try to catch up on all the work at home you neglected the rest of the week due to to your paying job or over-commitments. I am talking Sabbath, which is an intentional day of doing only what is restful and replenishing. I used to try to take one Sabbath rest per month but even that is a violation of the Sabbath principle of 6 days of work and 1 day of rest. I can tell I am soul tired.

So how do you do this? How do you recover from soul tiredness or soul fatigue? Smith gets practical when he writes, “On Sabbath days, we can be our ordinary selves, resting with our bodies and minds. On Sabbath days, we might choose not to dress up as we might on working days. We might choose to lounge for hours as we are, in pyjamas, T-shirts, and shorts, allowing even our bodies to rest from starch, polyester and makeup. There is nothing to be ‘made-up’ on Sabbath, is there?”[11]

Beloved, the world may be crumbling around us, but the Lord does not move and to recover perspective, we need to not move either. This will help us exalt God among the nations and for Him to be exalted on the earth. The Lord of Hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our stronghold.

But we don’t do it unless we remember Christ. Christ was silent when the world was crumbling around him. Literal earthquakes rocked Palestine when he died on the Cross. That silence from heaven has enabled us to truly be still so that our hearts can find rest in God.

As we close, I want us to just listen and reflect on this song by Steven Curtis Chapman based on Psalm 46: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BgaHaioAjyg

[1]Source: https://www.cnn.com/2018/08/09/us/new-mexico-compound-children/index.html. Accessed August 9, 2018.

[2]Derek Kidner, Psalms 1-72 – Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries(Downer’s Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1973), 35.

[3]Kidner, 174.

[4]Gerald H. Wilson, The NIV Application Commentary – Psalms Volume 1(Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2002), 720.

[5]Kidner, 174.

[6]David Garrison, A Wind in the House of Islam: How God is Drawing Muslims Around the World to Faith in Jesus Christ(Monument, CO: WIGTake Resources, 2014).

[7]Wilson, 721.

[8]Wilson, 718.

[9]Stephen W. Smith, Soul Custody (Colorado Springs: David C. Cook, 2010), 108.

[10]Smith, 106.

[11]Smith,107.