Remember these are notes. Don't expect complete sentences or good grammar.

SERMON ON PSALM 91:1-2.

Theme of whole Psalm: Security in Danger.

"What are you afraid of"... Teenage Poll

    My Parents Dying  54%

   Failing in School  44%

   Dying  43%

   Having a Car Accident  34%

   Loneliness  33%

   Not Having a Boyfriend/Girlfriend  30%

   Being Beaten/Injured  29%

   Disease  28%

   Rejection  28%

Psalms 91:1-2 1 He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty. 2 I will say of the LORD, "He is my refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust." (NIV)

4 titles for God:

•        Most High

•        Almighty

•        Lord or  Yahweh.

•        My God.

4 metaphors of security he gives:

•        Secret shelter.

•        Shadow

•        Refuge

•        Fortress.

3 responses.

•        Trust.

•        Abide

•        Speak to others about this.

1.         Shelter (niv) or Secret place (kjv)

 `Secret place' -

`go into your room and close the door and pray to your father in secret.'

Then your own room becomes your meeting place with God.

Why should it be in secret?

Jesus tells us that public prayer meant to show-off our own piety is repugnant to God

On the one hand we must not be ashamed of prayer but on the other,

prayer is deepest when it is private for there the fellowship between us and God is most intimate and precious.

(like our relationship with another person - really close  - really opening our heart to a bosom friend - it has to be away from the madding crowd.)

NIV calls this secret place a `shelter'.

•        against weather.

•        cold and wind that may buffet us - experience on a mountain and the calm that a rock brings.

•        Cold winds of unloving criticism, or plain misfortune.

•        Have you and I ever been really buffeted and knocked so that you thought you might be knocked over?

•        perhaps we have done that to others?

•        The quietness of your own private place with the Lord can be a great shelter in which you can recover.

•        Are we using this?

2. Shadow.

Not the wind and cold but the sun.

Not so familiar in our climate.

Ps 121 `I will lift up mine ....  the sun will not smite thee by day'

•        Weariness caused by heat exhaustion.

•        •        Fainted, fever, delirious.

•        Excessive weariness with the pressures of life can cause irrational anxieties.

•        can't cope, and things get way our of proportion.

•        Go to your secret place and get in the shade.

3. Refuge.

•        A place to which to flee.

•        Some say: don't run away from problems, but face them.

•        That is certainly true but ..

•        .. there is a place simply to forget temporarily and lose oneself in the greater purposes of God.

•        You don't have to simply pray about that which is buffeting you and frightening you.

•        Time to withdraw in order to receive strength to go back into the world.

•        Get things back into proportion.

4. fortress.

•        Nothing can ultimately destroy you.

•        Remember these verses:

Luke 12:4 "I tell you, my friends, do not be afraid of those who kill the body and after that can do no more. (NIV)

Rom 8:35-39 35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? 38 For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, 39 nor anything else, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. (NIV) .

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•        Why should we have this confidence?

4 titles for God used in these two verses.

1. Most High

•        Lit: High High.

•        Over all.

•        Jesus ascended beyond the skies into heaven itself.

•        Not one of the things in space.

•        sun, stars, planet earth, comets, planets. black holes, galaxies are all objects in space.

•        He is not one of these things, not even the greatest of the things `up there'.

•        God created space itself.

•        Jesus the name high over all.

•        Warnings in scientific circles of danger from outer space - asteroids etc.

•        Something spectacular is going to happen high up there.

•        God is Lord of all these things - high over all.

•        Nothing too high for the reign of God.

•        Because God is Lord of space

•        means that we can pray for others far away from us - distance is no barrier to effective prayer.

2. Almighty.

The actual hebrew word is `El Shaddai'- meaning is uncertain.

Connected with mountains - `shadu'. (accadian language).

Gen 49:26 your father's blessings are greater than the blessings of the ancient mountains, than the bounty of the age-old hills. (`Everlasting hills' kjv.)

Hills are a blessing.

Shear majesty of the mountains - beauty, grandeur, and permanence.

But the Lord's blessing is much greater.

It was that, that sustained Abraham Isaac And Jacob in their feelings of insecurity as they moved homeless from place to place.

Ex 6:3 I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob as God Almighty, (El Shaddai) but by my name the Lord I did not make myself known to them. (NIV)

Mountain - glory, Sinai,

            commandments.

            transfiguration.

            ascension of Jesus from a

                        mtn.

            return to a mtn.

3. Lord - YHWH.

Eternal one.

•        Greater than space - also greater than time.

•        God created time.

•        No beginning or end.

•        First and last.

If the Universe had always existed - infinite time before anything would happen, or, an infinite time before God created it, so nothing would happen!

Exodus 3:14 God said to Moses, "I AM WHO I AM. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: `I AM has sent me to you.'" (NIV)

`I AM,' THE ETERNAL ONE.

and

The One Without Real Name'

Everything has a name.

We need names to distinguish one thing from another.

If all animals were called dogs there would be no way to distinguish....

So everything in the universe has to be given a name.

Adam named the animals.

God named the first humans.

So who named him?

No-one greater.

Not one object among others.

He is the source of everything.

All other things exist because he has created them and allowed them to change and develop.

He simply exists `on his own' and therefore is not given a name like other things.

He is simply `the eternal one who is, was, and always will be.'

alpha and the omega the beginning and the end.

•        Therefore time is no barrier to our prayers.

•        Have you ever prayed a retrospective prayer?

•        `May the operation that my friend had in Australia yesterday have been successful!

•        Is it too late to pray that prayer?

What do you think?

•        God knows our prayers from the beginning.

•        His answers to our prayers are incorporated into world from the beginning of creation.

•        Our six year old son prayed that it might stop raining and the sun come out as soon as we finished our picnic in the car - and it did - that very moment!

C. S. Lewis would say:

God ordered the weather from the beginning is such a way that it responded to his prayer.

Mystery to us and perhaps we shouldn't speculate.

•        But what we do know is that God is greater than time.

•        He is the eternal one, on whom all time depends.

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4. My God.

•        Yes greater than time and space.

•        Greater than the majesty and beauty of the everlasting hills.

•        But nevertheless near and dear to me (& you).

•        If God were merely a big object somewhere in space he could not be near us.

•        He can only be near us in Scotland and Australia at the same time because he is greater than space and distance.

•        He can only hear millions of prayers at once because he is greater than time.

Over all and in all.

Jesus ascended in order to fill all things.

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So what shall we do?

Three words from these two verses:

1. Dwell or abide

 He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty.

Take our ease in the Lord.

Make him our home.

`anyone who loves me, my father and I will love him and make our home with him.'

2. trust.

That is what God wants from us most.

Not irrational leap.

The common sense response to the wonder of creation and the wonder of the love of God shown in the cross of Jesus.

3.  Say.

Yes our most intimate prayer is the secret of our own room.

However we must not keep it a secret.

Do not be ashamed to tell others about the Lord, that they too may find in the one who is:

•        exalted above all things in heaven and earth,

•        more majestic and beautiful than the mtns,

•        the eternal one,

•           shelter, shade, refuge and fortress.

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