God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. We are His people. We don’t deserve to be his people. Every one of us was born his sworn enemy. Every one of us continues to sin and go astray. Our sins are countless, and yet God has forgiven them all through faith in his Son. God’s love is unlimited. And his love is personal. He knows your sins. He knows how desperately you need him. But he cared enough about you, to bring you to faith. He sent his Son to wash your sins away. He chose you to be one of his saints and live forever with him in heaven. God is your refuge and strength, "an ever present help in trouble."

God has protected His people in ages past through even the greatest earthly calamities. Don’t those words in the Psalm remind you of the great flood that covered and destroyed the whole earth? The highest mountains were covered with water. The continents were rearranged. Every living thing was destroyed, except those on the Ark. Every human being on the whole planet was killed, sucked down to the depths as they screamed in fear and horror. But not Noah, not his three sons and their wives. There were eight people on earth who still believed in God and all eight of them sailed through the greatest disaster of history—bar none—unharmed, warm, and dry, cradled in the loving hands of the Almighty God. He was their refuge and strength, an ever present help in the greatest trouble.

And when he saved them, he saved you too. Because they carried with them the seed of the promised Savior. God had told Eve her Descendant one day would destroy the devil’s power, and God keeps his promises. When God saved Noah, the salvation of millions of others depended on it too. If Noah had drowned, Adam would have gone to hell, and Eve and Seth and Methuselah, and all the children of Israel—and you too. But the God who saved Noah, will never let you down, either. God is our refuge and strength, an ever present help in trouble.

There are still times when it seems the earth will give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea—and one day they will! Jesus predicted "There will be signs in the sun, moon and stars. On the earth, nations will be in anguish and perplexity at the roaring and tossing of the sea. Men will faint from terror, apprehensive of what is coming on the world, for the heavenly bodies will be shaken." (Lk 21:25) We hear dire reports about the "Greenhouse effect," the depleting of the ozone layer, worried predictions about the coming over-population explosion that are tempered now by new worries that AIDS in the third world will lead to depopulation. Scientists talk of the end of the "Age of Antibiotics" and forecast the return of great international epidemics. There’s more than enough to fear. But come what may, "God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. ² Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea…"

Christians needn’t worry. God is still with us. To him we can flee for He is our Refuge. On Him we can count for He is our Strength, even when the earth is in turmoil and upheaval. A Mighty Fortress Is Our God!

This planet is falling apart, sometimes gradually, sometimes in leaps and fits, but for us who know the truth, there are greater dangers than this. It would be a small, momentary victory only, if Satan snuffed out our earthly life. "Take they our life, goods, fame, child and wife—let these all be gone, they yet have nothing won, the Kingdom ours remaineth." There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy place where the Most High dwells. ⁵ God is within her, she will not fall; God will help her at break of day.

The City of God is the church—the people who make up the church. You are the holy place where the most high dwells and the river that makes us glad is the water of life, which, when a man drinks it he will never thirst again. The promises of God have given you spiritual life and refreshed your soul again and again. The Gospel has guaranteed you a permanent dwelling in heaven. And because God lives in you—in us collectively—there’s no way he’s going to let us fall. God has built his Mighty Fortress around us.

There are always those who attack the Gospel. Jesus himself was under constant attack. Those who cannot stand the truth plotted to kill him until they finally had him crucified. Eleven of Jesus’ personally chosen Apostles were martyred. And Jesus tells us we have no reason to expect to be treated any better than he was. Unless the Holy Spirit works a conversion in people, they remain sworn enemies of the truth. They don’t want to believe there’s a God to whom they’ll have to answer for their actions. They won’t tolerate anyone who says they’re sinners. So how could they have any use for a Galilean preacher who claims to be the Son of God and the Savior from sin and the Way and the Truth and the Life?

Unbelieving generations will tolerate the church only as long as it accommodates them. As long as the church gives up it’s claim to have the only truth, as long as the church stops insisting sin is sin and all are sinners, as long as the church stops insisting that God’s grace alone lets us into heaven, as long as the church stops insisting that faith in Jesus is the one and only way to heaven—then it will get along well in the world. It’s no wonder the visible church at many times and at many places has given in to the world. It’s no surprise the visible church was desperately in need of reformation and restoration at the time of Martin Luther.

And so it’s no wonder either that unbelievers masquerading as men of God wanted desperately to burn Luther at the stake and burn his writings with him. But Luther was part of the city of God. He—together with all believers—was the holy place where the most high dwells, and so God protected him. Twenty-five years Luther lived under a "Wanted: Dead or Alive" edict. Yet he died a natural death. God was his Mighty Fortress. After he died, it’s an absolute miracle the Lutheran church survived. Between the Protestant heretics on the one hand who wanted to abandon the pure river of the Gospel anew, and the anti-Gospel, anti-Christian, unrepentant, unreformed papist armies who tried to undo the reformation with the sword on the other hand, God’s grace, his strength, and his will are the only explanation as to why there are still people like us today, who know the truth that sets us free.

Things haven’t gotten much better. It’s hard to tell who’s the worst enemy of Christ today. Is it the atheistic world which just won’t hear of God? Is it the archheretic in Rome who still insists we earn our way to heaven and by so saying slaps Christ in the face? Is it the liberal Protestant ministers and ‘ministresses’ who insist Jesus was just a nice man who came simply to teach us to be nice and that all nice people go to a nice place called heaven because God is nice?

People gobble such garbage up. How, in such a world, can true Christianity survive? Psalm 46 answers the question: There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy place where the Most High dwells. ⁵ God is within her, she will not fall; God will help her at break of day. ⁶ Nations are in uproar, kingdoms fall; he lifts his voice, the earth melts. ⁷ The Lord Almighty is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress.

There have been many times when it appeared all was lost. But God was there, and he rescued his people. He is here today as well, He is our refuge and strength forever, even when the judgment comes.

When Sennacherib surrounded the city of Jerusalem with the whole Assyrian army, they were about build siege ramps up the city walls and all was lost—or so it seemed. But Sennacherib made a mistake. He blasphemed the name of the Lord of hosts. King Hezekiah and all Jerusalem prayed that God wouldn’t let him get away with it. God heard and answered: "I will defend this city and save it, for my sake and for the sake of David my servant." [declares the Lord]. That night the angel of the Lord went out and put to death a hundred and eighty-five thousand men in the Assyrian camp. When the people got up the next morning—there were all the dead bodies! (2 Ki 19:34-35)

The Psalmist says: Come and see the works of the Lord, the desolations he has brought on the earth. ⁹ He makes wars cease to the ends of the earth; he breaks the bow and shatters the spear, he burns the shields with fire. ¹⁰ "Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth."

And so shall it ever be! Yes, wars, rumors of wars, antichrists and Antichrist can make us tremble and fear that all is lost for the true cause of Christ, but The Lord of Hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress. When Christ returns, the final victory will be complete. He will destroy all sin and forever banish all unrepentant sinners from his presence and ours. "Though devils all the world should fill all eager to devour us, we tremble not we fear no ill they shall not overpower us. For us fights the valiant one whom God himself elected. He’s by our side upon the plain with his good gifts and Spirit." "Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth." Today we commemorate a time when the Word of God won the victory against all odds. Let us rejoice today that we still have the very same Word and the very same Lord Almighty. He will rescue his saints in the future as he has in the past. Heaven and earth will pass away, but [Christ’s everlasting Gospel] will never pass away. (Mt 24:35) Therefore, we tremble not, we fear no ill. They shall not overpower us. A Mighty Fortress Is Our God. Amen.