Be Still and Know that I am God
Psalm 46

I brought a back pack with me this morning. It feels like a load of bricks -- not surprising since it is a load of bricks. This backpack contains the various problems that we have brought with us into worship this morning. For example, a credit card bill and a bank account statement. Many of us have come into worship with nagging worries about money. How am I going to pay for that car repair? That dental bill? An instant cold pack and some bandaids -- because all of us have been hurt or wounded in some way -- perhaps the wounds are very old, even from childhood, and they've never healed, perhaps their fresh -- a fight last night, or angry, insensitive words this morning. A skeleton -- we had to hide this away when my 4 year old nephew came to visit because it was too scary; it represents the fears we bring with us. Fear of death, failure, abandonment.

You get the idea: We have all come here with various burdens -- some big, some small, but all of us have them. They are like storms whirling around in our heads. Some of them are just small dark clouds hanging over us. Some are like hurricanes: A friend or family member dying, a relationship falling apart, deteriorating health. There is lots of turmoil going on inside us. And often when I come to worship I don't feel quite right about bringing all of this in, so I check my bag at the door, and for a few minutes I pretend that everything is all right. I treat worship as an escape -- a sort of drug that I take to temporarily forget about my anxieties and wounds -- and then I pick them back up again when I go out.

I've sometimes said at the beginning of a worship service -- let's put our burdens aside so that we can worship. And my intentions may have been good, but I think I was wrong. What I should have said was bring your burdens in. There is nothing there that will surprise God.

Worship should not be an escape from our circumstances -- a band aid, a pain-killer that makes us forget them for a few minutes Sunday morning. No, worship should bring God and our circumstances together. It should bring God into the pain and difficulty and conflict and sin that we bring with us. True worship shouldn't be an escape from real life. In true worship, who we are, with our whole bag problems, confronts who God is. And the result is sometimes potent -- which is why so many of the Psalms are filled with passion and anger and pleading. The writers are coming before God in worship, but they are bringing their human problems with them -- and often the two things don't seem to fit together: God hates evil. Why does he tolerate so much of it? God is loving, So why am I hurting so? Why Lord? How long, O Lord?

We see this coming together of God and human circumstances in Psalm 46.

On the Mass Turnpike, coming east out of the Berkshires, there are a couple of runaway truck ramps. They are basically just large piles of gravel leading up of a ramp and ending in the mountainside. They are intended to be used by semis if their brakes fail. I'm happy to say that I've never seen them in use. But when I pass them, I can't help but think about what it would be like to be on a runaway truck. Fully loaded, it has a huge amount of momentum. It seems like nothing could stop it. That runaway truck represents the worst imaginable human circumstances -- our worst fears and anxieties realized.

And this Psalm calls on us to imagine the very worst circumstances we can possibly think of -- far worse than anything any of us are actually facing right now. It asks us to imagine our world crumbling around us:

. . . though the earth give way; though the mountains fall into the heart of the sea , though it's waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging.

In November 1991 my brother and sister-in-law were living in Ipswich, just a few hundred yards from the Atlantic, when hurricane Grace came through. It has now been made famous by a bestselling book called the perfect storm. My sister-in-law couldn't resist going out to watch it, and she describes waves coming so high that they were breaking into the back yards of houses that were on cliffs 30 feet above the water. Wave heights in the open ocean reached more than 70 feet.

The storm that Psalm 46 depicts is worse than the perfect storm. It sweeps the earth from under your feet and makes mountains crumble like sand castles. Earth and mountains are what we most take for granted -- they are symbols of stability in our lives -- the things you count on that seem predictable and trustworthy. Perhaps the love of your family, or Those are your earth and mountains. Imagine them swept out from under you. Imagine yourself without family, without friends, homeless, penniless, sick -- every support gone.

So on the one hand we have these unimaginably bad circumstances. Your life is crumbling. There is no stability anywhere. Not only that but whole world is in turmoil. s. 6 -- Nations are in uproar, kingdoms fall.

And on the other hand we have God.

And I'd like you to think of Psalm 46 as a collision between the runaway tractor trailer truck of terrible human circumstances and the massive rock of God's character. And you know what happens when a vehicle, even a very large vehicle plays chicken with a very large rock. [I don't recommend testing this] The very large rock wins. It doesn't matter whether your circumstances are the size of a subcompact or the size of a locomotive. They won't get past the rock.

And in Psalm 46 these terrible circumstances come head on against two very simple truths about God:

1. God is with us.

This is the dominant theme of this Psalm, repeated at least 4 times:

At the very beginning: God is my refuge and strength, an ever present help in trouble. In verse 5, Speaking of Jerusalem: God is within her, she will not fall . In vs. 7: The Lord Almighty is with us, the God of Jacob is our refuge . And again at the very end: The Lord Almighty is with us.

The first, great rock-like fact about God that we come up against when we bring the burden of our circumstances to God is simply that God is with us . But to derive encouragement from this fact, we need to understand what it means:

My children experiences two very different ways of being with me. I may very well be home, be with them, be right next to them. They may be climbing over me, or yelling in my ear for attention. But my attention is elsewhere. I am present physically, but I am not available to them.

But I hear a scream from the back yard, or I see one of them in tears, then I am with them in a very different way. I am available, attentive, with them.

God's presence can also be known in different ways. God is present everywhere in the world. To use a theological term, he is immanent. There is no place that you can go where you can escape the presence of God. Everywhere you go, He is there.

But God is present with his people in a special way. He is not just there. He is active, attentive, and available to us. Not just with us, but for us -- on our side, looking out for our interests, helping us, comforting us, protecting us. The Psalmist pictures the presence of God with his people like a river -- not a raging torrent, but a deep, wide, life-giving river, running through the center of Jerusalem. There's an odd thing about this image: Any of you who know the city of Jerusalem has no river. It's on a hill top. And it's as if the Psalmist is saying, Jerusalem doesn't need a physical river: God is like a river to his people -- a constant source of life, of refreshment, and of joy. There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy place where the most high dwells. God is within her, she will not fall.


The the first great rock of God's character that we come up against here is that God is with us in the storms of our lives.

2. There's another: God is sovereign over our circumstances.

In other words, he's in full control, and nothing is out of his control. He is sovereign over nature, and he is sovereign over nations:

vs. 6 Nations are in uproar, kingdoms fall; he lifts his voice, the earth melts. Vs. 8Come and see the works of the Lord, the desolations he has brought on the earth. He makes wars cease to the ends of the earth; he breaks the bow and shatters the spear, he burns the shields with fire.

This is not quiet diplomacy, or negotiation -- it is forcible disarmament.

Now here's the problem I struggle with. I can believe that God is with me. And it's a great comfort. And I can accept in an intellectual sort of way that God is sovereign. If God was not sovereign, he would not be God. But what stretches the imagination is to put the two together.

The most frightening storm I've experienced was on a backpacking trip in Pakistan. I was in highschool and went backpacking with my older brother and sister. We set up camp at about 10,000 feet, fairly near the summit of a mountain called Marinjani. That night a storm moved through, and we were scared to death. Lightning, thunder, wind, rain. In a small tent, a storm seems magnified. We spent a very long and sleepless night, and to keep our spirits up we sang songs of worship that reminded us of God's presence with us and his care for us.

But what blows the mind is to think that the one with us is the one who controls the storm. He is not just a fellow victim, a more experienced companion. He is the Lord of the storm AND he is there in the tent with you.

That was what most surprised the disciples about Jesus. When they were out on the sea of Galilee in a terrible storm, they were happy to have Jesus with them. (Luke 8:22) It was a comfort. In fact they were upset that he fell asleep, because they wanted the comfort of his companionship in the midst of the storm. But they were completely astounded to discover that the one who was with them in the storm, was also Sovereign over the storm. They knew Jesus was with them. They knew God was sovereign. They were awestruck to discover that the one with them was the sovereign God.

And that people, is where we need to come in our worship today: All of our storms -- the bag of problems that I showed you. We need to bring them before God and be reminded that God is with us in the boat, AND that the one who is with us in the boat is also sovereign over our storms.


When we bring our circumstances and problems into worship, and they collide head on with these two facts about God -- that God is with us and that God is sovereign, what should our response be? The climax of the Psalm comes in verse 10: "Be still and know that I am God."

"Be still" here is not meant primarily as a comfort -- the way we might say to a sick child, there, there, be still, don't worry. No, this is a command and a rebuke. Jesus rebuked the winds and the waves and said "Peace! Be Still!" -- and he gives exactly the same command to us: "Be Still!" To all of our worries and doubts and discontent and anxiety and fear and sin he says: "Be Still and know that I am God -- I am with you and I am sovereign.


My challenge similar to last week: Take time to worship each day this week. And into those times of worship bring your most tormenting life circumstance -- the biggest storm in your life. And acknowledge God's presence in that storm, and God's sovereignty over that storm. Then heed his command to be still!

"We must be still as to words; not speaking against the sovereign dispensations of Providence, or complaining of them; not darkening counsel by words withbout knowledge or justifying ourselves, or speaking great swelling words of vanity. We must be still as to actions and outward behaviour, so as not to oppose God in his dispensations; and as to the inward frame of our hearts, cultivating a calm and quiet submission of soul to the sovereign pleasure of God, whatever it be."
(Jonathan Edwards)