Unshaken | Our Dwelling Place (Sept 26, 2021) Jeremy Laverty

Hello and welcome to the Redemption Church Podcast.

We're a church in Newmarket, Ontario, Canada that exists to glorify God through the fulfillment of the Great Commission and the spirit of the Great Commandment.

Thanks for joining us today.

Hello, on Sunday, unfortunately, the first part of the sermon was not recorded, so we've re-recorded the intro for you to hear the entire sermon in this podcast.

When I was in my late teens, early twenties, I had the tremendous opportunity to lead many overnight camping trips.

I was a tripper, a camp leader that was responsible for leading kids into the wilderness and out of the wilderness and ensuring their survival in between.

On one particular trip, I had a group of thirteen to fourteen-year-old counselors in training from the inner city in Toronto, the Jane and Finch area.

They were going to develop their leadership skills by doing a multi-site trip in Algonquin Park for seven days.

So when preparing for this experience, the highest priority for me was ensuring that they knew how to set up and use their tent.

See, this would be the shelter that they would live in, dwell in, that would protect them from the elements and animals that we may encounter on the trip.

For a group of kids who had zero context for this type of experience, it's difficult to cover, well, everything that they need to know.

So I may have missed covering one particular topic with this group.

So they they learned how to set up the tents, you know, putting the poles in the right sleeves, the flies were all on properly, the zippers were all zipped up correctly.

But we're talking about nylon fabric, right?

A temporary structure that is not impenetrable.

So when little Johnny climbed into his sleeping bag and fell asleep with his face pressed into the corner of the sidewall of the tent, he had no idea what was about to happen.

See, it's amazing, isn't it, that we trust that thin fabric to protect us?

Right?

If it starts raining, you jump in the tent, you know, and somehow that's gonna protect you from the rain or the maybe the bears outside and that kind of thing.

You know, to keep us uh safe from harm, we we trust these temporary structures to keep it safe.

But it certainly doesn't protect us from the very thin nose that a mosquito has.

So when one discovers warm flesh on the other side of a nylon tent wall, well, they call their friends in for a feast.

So poor Johnny slept through the night while a swarm of mosquitoes munched away right through the tent wall.

So Johnny woke the next morning with so many mosquito bites on his face that it had swollen into the shape of the corner of the tent.

The boys in the tent with him woke me up when they screamed, not recognizing this corner-faced person in the tent with them.

Thankfully, two days of Benadryl relieved poor Johnny from the swollen face, and he learned a valuable lesson about where to put his face while sleeping in a tent.

So, in our passage today, the author speaks of a dwelling place, a refuge that is far superior than an island tent, or any other earthly thing that you or I could use to provide safety and security.

We are reading in Psalm 91, and one of the most wonderful things about the Psalms is how they speak across the generations, across the centuries.

They are always relevant, and this passage uniquely speaks to the time we find ourselves in right now.

So turn with me now as we read Psalm 91.

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 a 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.

A thousand may fall at your side, ten thousand 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, who 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 your hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone.

You will tread on the lion and the adder, the young lion and the serpent you will trample underfoot.

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 honor him with long life, I will satisfy him and show him my salvation.

So our big idea here is really going to focus on verse one and two.

I'd love to unpack this whole passage, but there's literally hours of content that I could come up with for that.

But when we choose to dwell in Christ, he provides some critical things.

So our big idea is when we choose to dwell in Christ, what is it that he provides for us?

So our first point today is shelter.

Shelter when I feel vulnerable.

I don't know about you, but right now I'm feeling vulnerable, right?

With shifting government, with this pandemic that we're still living through.

God here is promising a shelter for us.

God has a shelter for his own.

And it is not just a place to visit from time to time.

Isn't that interesting?

You know, when we're camping, we spend the day outside, and then we retreat to our tent at the end of the night.

What we're talking about here is a place to dwell, a place to live, take up residence, exist within.

Our presence, or sorry, his presence is our home.

Not only a place to retreat to, but an ever-present comfort.

To dwell also means to keep your attention directed.

When you dwell on something that is constantly in your mind, right?

You're ever aware of and engaged in the presence of God, and that's all you think and talk about.

Do you have people in your life like that?

The ones who can't stop stand, they just can't stop talking about God.

You know, the way that He's impacting their life.

When you send them a text asking them a question and they respond with scripture, they have an obvious reliance on God.

A daily, walking, breathing relationship with God.

Can I encourage you?

Get around those people.

Those are people that sometimes we can kind of push off and be like, oh, here we go again, more scripture.

But you know what?

Those are people that are going to rub off in the right way in your life.

Too often we're drawn to conflict.

I don't know if you've noticed.

There's this wonderful gentleman named Paul who runs Centum, which is the mortgage company beneath our office, and every morning I see Paul and I'm like, hey, Paul, how are you?

Yeah, the drive here was awful.

Man, I don't, I when I walk away from a conversation with someone like that, it's just deflating.

So we need people in our life who are living, walking, breathing, having these beautiful relationships with God, dwelling with God.

I remember asking a mentor of mine once what she was reading in scripture, and she said, Well, I've been reading this one passage of scripture the last three months.

I don't remember what scripture that was, but for three months?

I was kind of floored by that, you know?

How could someone park in scripture for so long?

Like a couple of sentences?

What could you possibly accomplish by sitting reading the same three sentences again and again for so long?

What you described was something I clearly missed out on.

The value of dwelling on the words of the Lord, allowing it to penetrate my heart, realign me with his truth.

Man, she understood what it means to dwell.

Now that's not to say that there's anything wrong with the Bible in the year approach, which is where I came from, you know, power through.

But there's something to be said for soaking in God's word.

I'm sure there's soakers here.

Are there soakers here?

People who are like, yes, I could just sit in one passage and glean truth uh day in and day out, allowing that truth to kind of saturate you, allowing it to penetrate the depths of your understanding, uh, and and real ultimately shaping our understanding of truth.

I've heard people say I'm too busy dealing with the junk of my life to read my Bible.

You know, once I get X, Y, Z sorted out, once I figure out this relationship thing, once I figure out my career path, once I figure out, then I'll have time to read the Bible.

This is a lie, isn't it?

Because once you figure that one thing out, there's another thing, isn't there?

There's another thing, and then another thing.

And eventually that Bible ends up sitting on the shelf gathering dust.

How in the world can you and I tackle the falsehoods in the world without being saturated in the truth?

How easy it is, how easy is it for you and for me to get up in the morning, turn on the news, or our YouTube channel, or our Facebook channel, or social media apps, allow that to feed us and shape our understanding of the world?

Based on what?

Well, based on an algorithm that informs the app what your interests are.

Oh, you're interested in this political slant.

Let me feed you that.

When this is our daily bread, how do we stay grounded in our faith?

Right?

How do we stay rooted in the truth as God sees it, not the curator of our content?

I find myself guilty of that.

Waking up in the morning, it's very easy to just grab my phone and say, What's going on in the world today?

Meanwhile, God's sitting there going, I know what's going on.

I can help inform you on how to respond to what's going on in our world today.

Come, speak to me, spend time with me.

To dwell.

Let's continue on in this passage.

Those who dwell in the shelter of the Most High abide under the shadow of the Almighty.

So, what does this mean?

So I think when I initially read this, I was thinking of siblings, you know.

When you say I grew up under the shadow of, you know, it was referring to something very different.

It doesn't mean the same thing as a younger sibling growing up in that shadow of an older sibling, the feeling of jealousy, you know, that you feel when you have an overachieving sibling that gets all the attention.

No, this is actually an analogy of the shelter that is provided by the shadow of God, illustrating his protection, right?

His comfort, his care.

On a hot day while camping, we retreat under the shadow of a tree to escape the heat of the sun.

In the same way, God is pictured as a provider, right, of shade, a place of rest and shelter.

It's also an illustration, and I hadn't thought of this, this illustration that Mary Duncan describes when she says the expression implies great nearness.

Because if you think about it, you must walk very closely to someone else to be in their shadow.

So if you and I are walking closely with God, his shadow will fall upon us.

And we would experience the protection, the sheltering that that provides.

Isn't that an interesting illustration?

When we walk in close intimacy with God, his shadow will be upon us.

So moving on to the next point here, when we dwell in Christ, he provides a fortress that we can trust.

He is my refuge and my fortress.

Now, when you picture a fortress, what do you think of?

Because I know for me, I immediately think of like medieval England, you know, the big walls, maybe a moat, you know, with a drawbridge and maybe cauldrons on the top.

You know, I picture a lot of that kind of thing, but um when reading this, obviously none of that has been created yet.

So I was trying to picture what it was that the author here was uh was picturing.

So interestingly, if you look up the Hebrew word for fortress that's used throughout the Psalms, there's four or five other references to this in scripture, and the word is Masada.

Now, Masada is actually a fortress.

Um I have a picture of it here.

It's a fortification in the southern district of Israel that was built on top of an isolated rock plateau.

Look at that.

Can everyone see that?

Isn't that unbelievable?

I mean, even in today's terms, if you were to say God is a fortress like Masada, we gotta be impressed, right?

Think about that.

Even, you know, when you think of the back then, imagine foot troops, you know, they don't have helicopters and planes, like foot troops trying to get into that fortress.

How impenetrable that would be?

What a great illustration that our psalmist references Masada as a fortress.

So much greater than the temporary safety of a tent in the wilderness, right?

To use our illustration.

We could lay against that wall and uh not worry about mosquitoes getting through the tent.

The one who lives intimately with God knows the greatness of his protection.

God himself becomes like a mighty refuge, a fortress, like Masada for the believer.

And listen to the language here.

As the psalmist is writing this, he doesn't just say, this is a fortress.

What does he say?

He says, This is my fortress.

My refuge.

This is a very personal claim, isn't it?

You and I have access to this personal claim.

Have you ever said definitely, oh Lord, you are my refuge?

Have you done that in your life?

Fleeing from all other comforts and false fortresses that we build for ourselves and that the world provides us?

Is your security rooted in the refuge of God?

Are you putting your trust in the fortress of God's protection for you each and every day?

Or are you relying on flimsy structures to ensure your safety?

This next part, my God in whom I trust.

This close relationship with God and all the benefits that come from it are for those who know Yahweh as God and who truly trust in him.

As a believer receives his protection, his comfort and care, he trusts God all the more and increasingly knows him as God.

And you know, as I think of this statement, my God in whom I trust, I just think of the great contrast that there is in this confidence with many people today, maybe not many, but people with very prominent voices that we see in social media and online, who are casting off their confidence in God and are sharing these deconversion stories, declaring a deconstruction of their faith, claiming they don't need their belief in God anymore.

They're casting themselves out into this sea of uncertainty.

I don't know if there's a God anymore.

In fact, I don't need to know if there is a God anymore.

What a contrast here, right?

What a contrast.

Where the psalmist declares, My God in whom I trust.

It's interesting how people are very prone to share their doubts, even bragging about their doubts, broadcasting it to the world through their online platform.

But church, listen, this isn't for us.

I love this quote.

Spurgeon said about this very topic men are apt enough to proclaim their doubts and even to boast of them.

Indeed, there is a party nowadays of the most audacious pretenders to culture and thought who glory in casting suspicion upon everything.

Hence it becomes the duty of all true believers to speak out and testify with calm courage to their own well-grounded reliance upon their God.

Could Spurgeon have written that today?

100%.

That should be us, church.

That should be us.

That last statement.

Right?

The duty of true believers, speak out and testify with calm courage to their own well-grounded reliance upon their God.

That is what we are called to do.

And listen, when times are really difficult, when it's plague time, times of pestilence and difficulty, think about that.

Our time.

How's that casting yourself into the sea of uncertainty working for you then?

It really doesn't have anything to offer anyone, does it?

You see, those things are luxuries for people who have the stability of wealth and infrastructure around them.

People who are so comfortable and safe that they have the freedom to deconstruct and drift without an absolute authority beyond themselves.

But those of us who know what it's like to go through crisis, to live in need, we are the ones who proclaim my God in whom I trust.

Isn't it a wonderful thing to have that proclamation?

My God in whom I trust.

Again, a very personal declaration.

Is he your God?

Would you say that today?

Are you living your life in relationship with the one who made you and the rest of this universe?

Are you allowing his truth to be your shield and your buckler?

Are you allowing his truth to inform your decisions in the midst of these shifting sands around us?

Some tough questions.

Verse 9 says, Because you have made the Lord your dwelling place, the Most High, who is my refuge, no evil shall be allowed to befall you.

No plague come near your tent.

Now we can read that and sometimes assume that what it's saying is that we are guaranteed freedom from disease and difficulty when we're in a relationship with Christ.

And that's not necessarily true, is it?

I know many of you have people in your life who've gone through struggle, that have gone through sickness.

I'm sure if you asked any seasoned follower of Christ, they will share of times when God has delivered them or their family members from dangers and snares, right?

From pitfalls.

Looking back on my own life, there were absolutely times when God protected me from physical and spiritual harm.

Ask my mom.

She said that the uh the guardian angels around me were working overtime during some seasons of my life.

These times we must really thank the Lord for, but this passage is not providing a guarantee that we will never get sick or face trials.

Yet, the encouragement here is that those who dwell in Christ, as we've talked about today, if you have surrendered your life to Christ, He and only He holds the keys to death and to life.

We can just relax in that, can we not?

So, in the midst of the stuff that's going on in our life, can we be rooted in that?

Can we relax in the fact that we know that Christ holds those keys?

Now, we take proper precautions, of course.

We aren't fools in the way that we conduct ourselves, but we understand that God ultimately is in control.

In this, he provides great assurance for us.

Our great confidence is in the Lord.

He will be with us in times of trouble.

Psalm 91 speaks so beautifully to this.

It has been proven time and time again in the lives of those who follow Christ, and I can assure you it'll be proven true in your life as well.

So the question remains then, where are you dwelling right now?

What is your dwelling place?

Where are you spending your time?

What is it that you're soaking in?

Is it the latest sports scores?

Is it what's happening in government?

Is it there's lots of visits.

But are you intentionally dwelling with Christ?

Are you spending time soaking in the truth of Scripture, allowing it to inform the way that you respond to the issues in our culture?

Or are you living like Ephesians 4.14 describes, as children tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness and deceitful schemes?

Are you like a sapling that blows with the wind of time?

Or to carry this analogy a little further, are you treating your faith as that tent that you take refuge in?

On Sundays, and then the rest of the week you spend outside braving the elements on your own and not considering Christ.

Church, let's turn to God as our fortress and dwelling place.

And in so doing, we'll receive the promise that He offers each of us at the end of this passage.

In verse 14, I'm going to read this to you as God would say it to you.

Because you hold fast to me in love, I will deliver you.

I will protect you because you know my name.

When you call to me, I will answer you.

I will be with you in trouble.

I will rescue you and I will honor you.

With long life, I will satisfy you and show you my salvation.

Let's pray.

Lord, may we cling to these words.

God, words of promise.

And you never back out on promise.

Lord, we can trust you.

You are a firm fortress, a refuge for us.

May we continue to turn to you in seasons of trial and in seasons of comfort.

May we choose to dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

May we proclaim boldly, my God in whom I trust.

Bless us for the remainder of this service this morning, Lord, and the rest of our day.

Father, may this ring true for us and the questions that were asked today, Lord.

May we wrestle through these and look at where we're dwelling and spending our time, Lord.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.