The Heart of the Bible—The Book of Psalms · Pastor Adam Wood · Psalm 46 · October 15, 2025

Transcript:
Alright, Psalm 46, what we're gonna do tonight is, is we'll read the Psalm, and we're gonna do something a little bit different than probably what we normally do in the Psalms that we've covered. We're gonna spend a lot of time turning different verses. I say a lot of time, we're just gonna turn to different verses and say less, but I wanna show you some things because of the nature of this particular Psalm. And so let's read it to begin. Verse number one, the subtitle reads, To the chief musician for the sons of Korah, a song upon Alamoth. God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore will not we fear, though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea, though the waters thereof roar and be troubled, though the mountains shake with the swelling thereof. Say la. There is a river, the streams whereof shall make glad the city of God, the holy place of the tabernacles of the most high. God is in the midst of her. She shall not be moved. God shall help her and that right early. The heathen raged, the kingdoms were moved. He uttered his voice, the earth melted. The Lord of hosts is with us. The God of Jacob is our refuge. Say la. Come, behold the works of the Lord. What desolations he hath made in the earth. He maketh wars to cease unto the end of the earth. He breaketh the bow and cutteth the spear in sunder. He burneth the chariot in the fire. Be still and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the heathen. I will be exalted in the earth. The Lord of hosts is with us. The God of Jacob is our refuge. Would you pray with me tonight? Our Lord, thank you for this Psalm. The reminders, Lord, that we have here to be still and know that you are God and to trust you and to rely upon your great power. And Lord, help us as we look through this Psalm, especially this particular viewpoint of it. We pray that you'd give us understanding and wisdom and broaden our perspectives on your word because Lord, we know that your word has so many layers of truth and we could spend all of our time just digging through them and recognizing them. And so Lord, help us tonight in our study. We pray in Jesus' name, amen. Now, as I said, we're gonna do something a little bit different. Normally when you come to this Psalm, most often what you would do is you would look at verse number one primarily and you would look at verse number 10 because those are kind of the go-to verses and they're good. They're good verses for us to remember to trust in God and not fret, right? To be still. And there are absolutely times that we just need to stop trying to do things. And as they say, let go and let God and that has its limits. But the idea being that there are absolutely times when the Lord doesn't want us to do anything but to trust him to do something, right? And that's kind of what's being described here, especially in, you'll know once we get through it, you'll see the context especially is true of that principle. And then of course in verse one, we see that God is our refuge and strength, the very present help in trouble. And the best example, recent example of that is when Peter was sinking in the water. Jesus was present, he was not only present, he was very present. And when trouble came and he started to sink, the Lord Jesus was there to help him. And you gotta remember that even in the midst of trouble, that it's not a matter of timing. Like you're in trouble and you're calling out to God, there's not a time delay when the Lord sends help, help's already on the way before you start asking. And there's scripture for that in Daniel in particular. Excuse me. But that's not what I wanna look at tonight because what those things are, are actually applications of verse one and verse 10. Those are actually applications. Like we do with all scripture verses, we look at it and to apply a verse means that we use it. We use it in a practical way. And so we take a verse, we take a truth understood in this particular context and we use it for ourselves to encourage ourselves to understand some truth about the Lord even though that's not directly what it's written about. For instance, as an example, you take something as simple as Noah's Ark. The story of Noah's Ark was not about us, it was about Noah, obviously. But you take the truths in Noah's Ark, they can be related to judgment, they can be related to salvation, they can be related to God's deliverance, all kinds of different truths and you can apply them to yourself. That's the difference between interpreting the Bible, knowing what its meaning, intended meaning is from the author in its context and using it. Because you can use the Bible in all kinds of ways as long as you're faithful to the truth of scripture. What we often do with this psalm though is we use the application of it and we never really understand the interpretation of it. What I wanna look at tonight is the interpretation of it. What I think this psalm means. Now, as I was reading a commentary that I sometimes read with the psalms, what I noticed is there's a strong tendency and a strong pull to just not mention, not ask what is this talking about? It talks about there is a river, what river? What river are we talking about? How many of you have read this psalm and thought what river is this talking about? Yeah, exactly. I know when different times you read parts of the Bible and you just kinda keep reading because you don't even know where to begin to look. It's just, you don't know what the interpretation is exactly talking about. So what do you do? You get what you can and you just keep moving. And that's okay, that's okay. But I wanna look at the interpretation of it. This psalm is divided into three parts. Verses one to three, verses four to seven, and verses eight to 11, each of which ends with the pausing word, say la. Verse one to three say this, God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Who is the speaker? The our, God is our refuge and strength. Now I know when you read it, right? I know when you read it as a Christian, and this is perfectly fine, you read it and you see our and you think me, right? And that's good. That's a devotional view of the Bible. And it's okay to do that so long as you don't go off, you know, over the edge in some unscriptural thing, which happens sometimes. But the our in this case is not referring to me and you. In context, it's referring to Israel, right? Because first of all, it's because it's a psalm, but there's several indicators through this. He talks about the tabernacles, the Lord of hosts, the God of Jacob indicating that this is all talking about Israel. All right, with that in mind, let's keep reading. But what I'm trying to present to you is I think this psalm is prophetic in nature. I think it's prophetic. Let's read verses one through three, and I'll show you what I mean. God is our refuge and strength, the very presence of help and trouble. Therefore will not we fear though the earth be removed and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea, though the waters thereof roar and be troubled, though the mountains shake with the swelling thereof. Now those are quite the event. Now we can look, I'll be honest with you, we can look at verses two and three and the mountains being removed and the earth trembling and shaking and the waters swelling and all of these things. We can look at that and we can say, devotionally as a Christian, we can say, when there's trouble in my life. Okay, and that's okay. But it's also kind of weak if you consider what it's saying. Because what it's saying is very, very much more significant than we got a flat tire at work or on the way to work or we have a financial need or we're sick or something like that. We're talking about the earth trembling, waves of the ocean, r...