#Hope in His Protection

Well, we have been in the series about hope and talking about

what does it mean to have biblical hope.

Well, how is that different than worldly hope?

And we looked at why we need hope.

And I unpacked that over the the first three weeks.

And then we had the wonderful Clare Mulroney, who spoke last

week. Yeah, we can give her a whoop.

Just so blessed by looking at hope in his provision.

And just love the way that Claire spoke into that and that

place of surrender as we surrendered to him to be our

provider. And if you missed that, you can

catch up on our YouTube channel. Do watch that.

If you missed it, I'd really encourage you to to watch that.

And as Claire said, over the next number of weeks, we're

going to be looking each week on those promises of God that we

can put our hope in. And I have a subject here and it

is entitled Hope in his protection, Hope in his

protection. And the way we're going to do

this is by looking at a very famous Psalm and it's probably

one of the most quoted Psalms. You will, you will have heard

it, I'm sure. And and it's typically used in a

form of a prayer. Many people will pray this Psalm

because it provides language for us to express a desire that we

have to be protected by God. And you know, one of the things

I spoke about a few weeks ago was the need for us to be real

with God, about our situation. To I think I use a phrase to

walk through the pain, don't let the pain walk you.

In other words, we need to not just be an optimist by ignoring

reality, but saying to God, this is what I'm feeling, this is the

reality that I'm walking through, and then give that to

God. And this Psalm allows us to do

that. It's also a Psalm that I'm sure

you've heard or maybe you've read to someone who is in need

of comfort, someone who is in need to feel that the Lord is

looking after them. And I know that as a parent,

Steph and I have often times quoted this Psalm.

If that hasn't whetted your appetite, I don't know what

will. Are you ready for the Psalm?

It's Psalm 91, I heard. Yeah, there you go.

I knew it was that Mark knew you're going to talk about Psalm

91. Well done.

So I'm going to read that it's going to be on the screen if

you're in the room, and if you're online, it'll be on your

device. However, you may want to close

your eyes as I read this. Maybe for you you need that

comfort this morning. Maybe for you you need to hear

the promise of protection. And so, rather than read it, why

don't you just listen to it as I read it?

To us, he who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will

abide in the shadow of the Almighty.

I will say to the Lord my refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom

I trust. For he will deliver you from the

snare of the Fowler, and from the deadly pestilence.

He will cover you with his pinions, and under his wings you

will find refuge. His faithfulness is a shield and

buckler. You will not fear the terror of

the night, nor the arrow that flies by day, nor the pestilence

that stalks in darkness, nor the destruction that wastes at

noonday. 1000 may fall at your side, 10,000 at your right hand,

but it will not come near you. You will only look with your

eyes and see the recompense of the wicked, because you have

made the Lord your dwelling place the Most High.

So is my refuge. No evil shall be allowed to

befall you. No plague come near your tent,

for he will command his angels concerning you, to guard you in

all your ways. On their hands they will bear

you up, lest you strike your foot against the stone.

You will tread on the lion and the adder, the young lion and

the serpent you will trample under foot, 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.

It will be with him in trouble. I will rescue him and honour him

with long life. I will satisfy him and show him

my salvation. Amen.

That is the word of the Lord. There is so much to unpack in

this Psalm, so rich in its meaning and so diverse in its

application. And I would be lying to you if I

didn't say that I struggled much with this Psalm this week as I

prepared. And I have wrestled with the

word as I have sought to try and convey the truth that is in this

word. Because there is much in here

that I believe the Lord wants to speak to us this morning.

And what I want to do is maybe just track through the Psalm

with you and and maybe point out some thoughts that the Lord has

given me. And the first thing that struck

me as I read this was simply verse one and two.

Let's let's read that again. It says this.

He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will abide in the

shadow of the Almighty. I will say to the Lord my refuge

and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust.

Now, I don't know about you, but when you think of protection,

what do you think about? Maybe you think about your seat

belt when you put on. I hope you put your seat belts

under the car. Maybe you've got an alarm system

with back to base monitoring. Maybe that's your protection

while you're at home. You know, when we had COVID,

everyone was wearing masks thinking that that would, you

know, protect us from germs. There are certain things to give

us protection from certain things and the way we use those

things, How many times can I use the word things?

Probably a few. When we have those times where

we need those things, we grab them and we use them.

But I want to say this, When we talk about and we think about

the protection of God, it's an altogether type of different

thing. It's not something you call upon

and put on. It's not something that you use

just in the moment. Yes, there are places and there

are times for arrow prayers. I love a good arrow prayer.

Help. And there's a place for that.

But you see, what the psalmist is suggesting here is that there

is a different approach to protection when we think about

God, rather than it being a one off thing, it's about

cultivating a lifestyle. And he says it here so well, he

says this. He who dwells in the shelter

dwells. What does it mean to dwell?

I think it means practising the presence of God, you know,

recognising that he is with us, you know, this week Ellie, our

middle child, she was struggling with some night terrors and as

as recently as last night she came into into our room and she

was, she was scared. And I said let me come with you

darling. And and I came with her to her

bedroom and she got into bed, and I just curled up on the end

of her bed and I dwelled with her, and she dwelled with me.

And the fact that she was dwelling with me, I didn't do

anything. I didn't have to do anything.

But the fact that she was dwelling with me, she was, she

felt protected and she was able to go to sleep.

And I think that's a rather beautiful picture of what the

Psalmist is talking about here. He's saying he who dwells with

God, He who walks with him, He who recognizes that God is with

him, that communes with God. You see, the protection that

we're talking about here is a result of communion with God,

relationship with him. It's about being in prayer.

It's about being in his word. It's about recognizing that he

sees all things and that he is wanting to be with us.

That's what it means to dwell. And I rather think in our

present modern day it is so difficult to dwell.

We skip from one thing to the next.

We snack on this, that and the other.

But have we lost the art of dwelling?

I think I'd rather have. But what's very interesting

about this Psalm you see, is that it moves from he to I.

Let me show you what I mean. Verse one is a general statement

of trusting God. He who dwells in the shelter of

the Most High will abide in this shadow of the Almighty.

And then verse two says this. I I will say to the Lord my

refuge and my fortress. You see, verse 2 is a personal

testimony. It's easy for us to declare God

is a protector. God is almighty, but the

question is, is it personal to us?

We can know about God, We can declare his character.

We can even tell ourselves. We can tell other people.

But actually the challenge in this Psalm is not do you know

that God protects? The challenge in this Psalm is

this. Do you know that he wants to

protect you? The challenge in this Psalm is

not to declare that those that abide with God are protected.

The challenge is this. Are you abiding with God?

You see, as Claire mentioned last week in her talk, when we

talk about surrendering to God, it's ultimately about trust.

Who do we put our trust in? And I've said it before, I said

that which you put your trust in is ultimately that which you

have hope in. You trust in your money, in your

bank balance. You have hope that your money

will solve your issues. And so fundamentally the

question here is, do you trust God enough that you can

surrender to him and dwell with him?

And I couldn't even get past one and past verse one and two in

preparing this word before I got unstuck, because I've seen

commentaries on this verse and I've heard sermons about this

verse and it's all about declaring who God is.

And let me just say we should do that.

But where in that is the personal challenge of saying

have you made it personal to you and said that he is, are you

dwelling with God? I think that's the first thing I

wanted to highlight. And then let's look on as we

read further. We get to verse 5, and there's

this wonderful 2 verses that says this.

You will not fear the terror of the night, nor the arrow that

flies by day, nor the pestilence that stalks in the darkness, nor

the destruction that wastes at new Day, noonday.

I mean this is quite a comprehensive protection list.

Think about it. You know when you if you ever

meet these these people that sell you alarm systems with back

to the base stuff, we don't personally have one.

But you know like package one, you've got this.

Package 2:00 is way more comprehensive.

Package three will come round in a van with the dogs.

Package four will have a helicopter for you hovering

above. You know, package 5 we can set

some armed guard around your perimeter, you know package 6

and on and on. This is like package 10.

This is like the gold package of protection.

I mean, what do we see? First thing we see that it is

all the time. What do we see?

Terror of night by day. And just so we're not confused.

And noon in the middle. I love that.

Why is that the case? Well, we read in Psalm 121.

I'm going to read this because this is a very similar Psalm in

many ways. It says this.

I lift up my eyes to the hills. From where does my help come

from? My help comes from the Lord who

made heaven and earth. He will not let your foot be

moved. Listen to this.

He who keeps you will not plumber.

You see, that story I told you about Ellie is a good analogy,

but it slightly falls short because I did doze off. 2 hours

later I woke up and thought, oh she's asleep.

I better come back to bed a little bit cold.

But you see, that's not our God. He dwells with us, but he

doesn't fall asleep like talk about monitoring.

Our God does not slumber. He is actively protecting you.

He's actively looking at you. He delights in you.

He wants to be with you. Some of you may feel like that.

No one wants to be with me. I want to tell you right now,

this morning, God wants to be with you.

Maybe you only came this morning to hear that one thing.

God wants to be with you. He wants to lie on the on the

bottom of the bed with you, so to speak, To use that analogy,

because it's a very comprehensive protection plan.

What else we see? Second things.

It covers all things. We've got fear there, emotion,

protection of our emotions. Then we've got physical,

personal attack. The arrow that speaks very much

of A of a targeting to you, doesn't it?

So we got, we got emotion, we got a personal physical attack,

then we've got what else? Physical, General danger,

pestilence. I mean, that covers it.

That's quite broad. And then it goes on.

What does it say? Destruction that that wastes as

a result of what's around you? I feel like this is a very

impact. In two verses, we can see a lot

about the heart of God towards us, for his protection for us.

It's a very comprehensive plan. And then let's read on a bit

verse 11. For he will command his angels

concerning you to guard you in all your ways.

On their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your

foot against the stone. Now, interestingly enough, I'm

sure some of you know this Psalm 91.

This point here is actually quoted or probably misquoted by

the devil. The only bitter scripture that

the Devil quotes. When?

When does he do that? Well, Jesus is in the in the

desert being tempted and we read about it in Matthew 4 verses 5

Matthew 4:5–6

to 6 and Satan quotes his verse and essentially tempts Jesus.

Say, listen, if you're good, climb up to the top of this

temple and jump down and the angels you know will will come

to protect you. Now how does Jesus respond?

Deuteronomy 616 Jesus replies, do not put the Lord your God to

the test. He's quoting Deuteronomy.

Do not put the Lord God to your test.

And I think this is a very important point, a lesson for us

when we talk about the protection of God.

You see, the protection we're talking about is a trusted

obedience in what God is calling us to.

But what it's not is a sinful presumption that God will

protect us no matter what we do. And I think this is important.

God has given us ways in which we live our lives not to limit

our freedom, but to protect us, whatever that might be.

And so often times I meet with Christians and they've come out

of God's will. Maybe they've had relations

outside of marriage and they've they've had issues resulting to

that. Maybe they're in a habit of

getting drunk. Maybe it's whatever it might be,

these things that God says this and don't do that.

And yet they find themselves out of God's will.

And they say, why didn't God protect me in that?

Now hear my heart here. I'm not saying that the by the

grace and the love of the Lord, He doesn't come in and save us

in spite of ourselves. And I've seen that.

But what is Jesus telling us in this?

Don't put your Lord God to the test.

I don't say. Well, God will protect me no

matter what. I'll just do it anyway.

It's fine. God loves me.

We call this hyper grace. And it doesn't matter what I do,

God will always. But I think there's a bit of a

stark warning from Jesus here that we can learn from.

And so I want to. I want to encourage you to say,

Lord, would you help me? Would you show me by your spirit

those things that I'm doing in my life that are outside of your

will, that are not dwelling with you?

But I'm going contrary to what it means to surrender my will

and my obedience to you. And I realize that that comes

comes across as a little bit hard, doesn't it?

But if we want to walk in the truth of the word and to walk in

the protection of our Lord, I think this is a really important

message for all of us this morning.

But at this juncture, we've covered a lot here.

This is where I got to struggling and wrestling with

the word, because we've talked about this very comprehensive

protection plan. We've talked about how if we

dwell with God, of which many here do, we'll be protected.

But here is why don't we address the elephants in the room?

Why doesn't that always happen? I could have just preached this

and got you excited and energized and and ignored this

fact. But I think we need to ask the

question because I suspect that just like me, where I've done

all this in spite of and I have had pestilence or my child has

had a disease or whatever it might be.

You say, Lord, help me understand.

What does it mean that I, I I've done all you've asked me to.

I I I've sought you in prayer. I've worshipped you.

I've lived my life in obedience to you as much as I'm able.

And yet why does this happen? I'm sure I'm not the only one

that's cried out to God and said that same thing.

And so I want to look at why that could be the case, and I

want to give you some possible reasons.

The first one is, this is what you may hear.

You don't have enough faith or you're not dwelling enough.

There are certain streams that would suggest that if you're not

walking in the promises of God to its entirety, it's down to

your lack of faith. I have been part of churches

where that was the message. And someone would say why am I

still sick? I pray to God.

I believe that God can can heal me and the and the and the

person said, well it's because you lacked faith and that's just

been a body blow. Now I don't want to undermine

the importance of faith. We know that in Jesus hometown

he wasn't able to do anything because they lacked faith.

I'm not talking about the fact that faith isn't important.

Absolutely is. What I'm telling you here is

that is not always the reason why we don't see this fulfilled

in our lives. So it's not necessarily that.

And some of you probably in some of these pestilences or some of

these issues and you've had faith and you haven't been

outside the Lord's will #2. This is another way in which

some people will help manage that tension by saying this, it

isn't a real promise of God, that the Psalm is just a poetic

desire, and it's poetry, and you need to read it with that lens.

So you can't claim this as a promise of God.

I disagree. Yes, it's poetry and it's

beautiful, isn't it? Yes, it gives us language to

express our desire. But here's the thing of it.

Does it express the character of God that you know and love?

Yes. And so this is a promise of God.

So OK, Mark, if it's not because I don't have enough faith,

although faith is important, and if it's not because these aren't

real promises, something else must be going on here.

Absolutely. And in order to understand this,

we need to understand it through the lens of His Kingdom breaking

in and the tension of the here and the not Yet.

What do I mean by that? The Lord's prayer?

Lord, would your Kingdom come here on earth as it is in

heaven? Now Jesus, when he came, he he

proclaimed that the Kingdom of God is at hand.

It is near, right? And when he died on the cross,

and if you've been here for any length of time, you would have

heard me speak about this before.

When he died on the cross, he inaugurated his Kingdom.

OK, that was the define decisive blow to the enemy.

And I've used the analogy before.

It's like D-Day and V day. That was the D-Day.

That was it. There was the the the battle had

been won. But there's the the battle had

to play out until we got to V Day, Victory Day.

And that is when Jesus comes again, and that is when his rule

and his reign is established here.

But until that time, we pray, Lord, with your will be done on

earth, in heaven. There are other wills at stake

here in play here. There's the devil's will.

There's our will. There's the world's will.

We're we're not in that place yet of the fully consummated

Kingdom. But you see, we live in this

tension that we see His Kingdom breaking in.

We have those those moments where we see miracles of

healing. We see those miracles that come

through, and sometimes we don't. And as painful it is as it is,

we live in that tension point. You hear me?

And that's why and we see and we grapple with this struggle.

So what does that mean, Mark, because you're talking about

hope here and all of a sudden I feel like, well, what's the

point? That's a fair question.

I get you What I would say to this is this, we're called to

live in the here, not the not yet bit.

Sorry, I'll say that no way around.

Shall we? Thank you.

What I'm pointing out, we're here to live in the not yet bit,

not the here bit. In other words, we're here to

declare the Kingdom, to embrace the Kingdom and to seek His

Kingdom. Because what's there for the

point of praying the Lord's Prayer?

And I bet you pray the Lord's Prayer.

Sometimes our desire is to see His Kingdom come.

And I would propose that a lot of the issue is, is that we camp

in the here bit and we don't embrace the not yet bit I've

seen in my life. It normally goes like this.

Well, what's the point? What's the point?

You know, Wimber when people used to come to him and say John

Wimber, the founder of Vineyard, say, listen, I pray for people.

I'm not seeing them healing healed, he said.

Listen, go pray for 5000, then come back and tell me.

Could have been a number higher or lower.

But the point here is that we give up so quickly, but we can

place our hope that he loves us and that that are his promises

and we've got to stand on those promises.

We declare those promises, we seek those promises.

And I suspect that in my life I will see more breakthrough if I

push into the not yet and embrace His Kingdom coming that

if I just give up and say, well, what's the point Because that's

the option we've got. But you see, there is hope in

God, and I want to encourage you this morning to fix your eyes on

God and say, listen, #1 I recognize that my protection

from the Lord comes out of a place of dwelling with him.

And for me that is where it starts, a personal challenge to

put my trust in him, to surrender in him, and to dwell

with him. And maybe for your question this

week is Lord God, can you just show me what does it mean to

dwell with you? Simple.

What does it mean to dwell with you?

#2 It's about then taking that as a personal testimony and

saying I'm not just declare who God is, I'm going to declare

that he is my God and I'm going to walk in that.

Number three, it's about saying and recognising that God's heart

towards us is to protect us from all things and #4 do a bit of an

audit in your life. How do you do this?

You say, Holy Spirit, would you come and convict me of all those

things in my life that are not right with you, that are

contrary to your will? You see, if you're praying the

Lord's prayer, Lord your Kingdom come, your earth be, your will

be done on earth as it is in heaven.

It has to start with you first. That prayer has to start with

praying it for yourself. You're not just saying, oh man,

that world's crazy. I wish they would do your will.

And yet we go on sinning in different areas.

That doesn't make any sense. The challenge here is to pray

the Lord's Prayer in our life and say, Lord, would you show me

that those areas that I'm not in your will?

And lastly, I want to say this as Kingdom people, we have been

called to extend God's Kingdom in faith and so we need to push

in and I often will pray this as a prayer.

As I said, Steph and I before have prayed this over our

children. That's a challenge for us to do

it more. But why don't you take this

Psalm and use it as your daily prayer and claim it for

yourself? Lord, thank you that your word

says that you will protect me during the day.

Thank you, Lord God, that your promise towards me is that

you'll protect me from pestilence.

Thank you, God. So turn that promise into a

prayer for your life and I and I guarantee you'll see, I

guarantee you will start seeing God move in ways you have yet to

see. And lastly, I would say this, I

know there'd been many times where God's protected me, which

I won't even know about until I get to heaven.

I mean, I remember this one occasion.

I do remember this time, it was about 25 years ago and I was in

London with some friends after work having a drink at a bar and

I had to go to the cash machine to get some more cash.

For whatever reason. I came out there was a part,

part van here, and I just stepped out and I went to do

this and literally as if someone held me back.

And in that moment, this bus went right by.

And I was like, oh, my word. I think an Angel just protected

me from that. I suspect there are many, many,

many occasions in your life where you look back and God has

saved you in that moment. So I've just been encouraged to

say, you know what, Thank you, Lord, that you protect me.

Thank you that you've protected me from myself.

Thank you for protecting me from the world.

Thank you Lord, for for the for the way in which you protected

me from other. Like God is there actively

working, but either A we don't give credit to it because we're

still disappointed about other stuff, or B we don't take the

time to recognize it. Thank you, Lord, that you're my

protector. And as we thank him out of that

lifestyle of thankfulness, our hope builds.

Our hope builds in God to be our protector.

I'd like us all to stand, if that's OK.