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The scripture reading of the morning is Psalm 46. God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change, though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea,

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though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains tremble with its tumult. There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy habitation of the Most High.

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God is in the midst of her, she shall not be moved. God will help her right early. The nations rage, the kingdoms totter, he utters his voice, the earth melts.

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The Lord of hosts is with us, the God of Jacob is our refuge. Come, behold the works of the Lord, how he has rocked desolations in the earth. He makes wars cease to the end of the earth.

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He breaks the bow and shatters the spear, he burns the chariots with fire. Be still and know that I am God. I am exalted among the nations, I am exalted in the earth.

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The Lord of hosts is with us, the God of Jacob is our refuge. And may God bless to us and to our understanding this reading from his word. Pray with me. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

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Amen. I would like to think with you this morning about heart weariness. About 2700 years ago, in the year 701 BC, the Assyrians under the leader of their emperor, Sennacherib,

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pillaged the tiny land of Israel. They did not, however, seek to capture the capital city of Jerusalem because they did not consider it to be of significant military importance. During the campaign, however, Sennacherib decided that he would also attack Egypt.

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And this changed the military significance of Jerusalem. So Sennacherib and his armies besieged the capital city of Israel. He sent an ultimatum to the king of Israel, a man named Hezekiah, demanding his surrender or his most certain defeat.

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Hezekiah took this ultimatum before God in prayer. And the next morning, all of the surrounding forces of the Assyrians were dead. The plague had come during the night and killed them all. And one of the citizens of the capital city sat down and wrote a song

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celebrating that great victory. And that song is what we call Psalm 46. Now I hear someone say, "Well, that's all very interesting, but what does that have to do with the glad living of life?"

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You're doing a series of sermons on how the psalms assist us in knowing joy in our everyday experience. How is a battle song 2,700 years old going to do that? I don't feel myself to be surrounded by Assyrians.

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Well, as Presbyterians, we believe that the scriptures are inspired of God, and we believe that they are protected by the Holy Spirit so that they speak to us in our time and in all times until the very end of time. The fact is there are many people today who feel besieged and embattled,

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and as if they are in constant warfare. They are pursued by bills or by job problems or by difficulties in the home. They worry about their friends. They are chased by their memories of guilt.

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Some of them are weakened by illness or by a poverty they do not seem to be able to escape. Some of them are humiliated by one circumstance or another in life, and these things eat away at their happiness. And there are many who are afraid.

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In the psalms, such ones are described as those who confront earthquake. When an earthquake comes, the most fearful aspect of it is the fact that you can't escape it. There's nowhere to run. So there are a lot of people who feel cut off, who feel betrayed and isolated and lonely,

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and can find no relief anywhere. These people, to pursue the figure of the psalm, are surrounded by besieging armies, and oft times their hearts grow very weary of the conflict. So Psalm 46 speaks to them, because it is a formula for peace.

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It points the way to the rest they so earnestly seek. Now the first thing that the psalm says to us is, it reminds us that God is the source of our life. God is our refuge, it says. Now that word "refuge" is a backward-looking word.

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We don't have a word like it in English. We can only translate that word with a phrase. We might say something like this, "God has been our protection from the beginning." That's the thought here, that God has watched over us in the course of our lives until now.

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Of course when I say that, I'm immediately sensitive to the fact that some people respond, "If the life I've had to live up to this time has been given to me by God, then no thanks." There are some people who are ready to say, as they survey the experience of their lives, "I wish I'd never been born."

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And they say that earnestly and seriously. But let me respond to them with equal earnestness and equal seriousness. All of the hurt and the ugliness, all of the distress and the despair which are part of life, are not put into life by God.

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These things come because of the contributions of humankind. God has given us the Ten Commandments. He has told us how we are to live our lives. And He has said if you follow these commandments, then you will know a power and joy in your life

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you will not know in any other way. But there are many who ignore those commandments, and then cannot understand why their lives have more hell in them than they do heaven. God has taught us in His Word the rules of good health,

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the things that are necessary if we are going to be strong in body and in mind and in spirit. If we ignore those things, then inevitably we are not going to know the physical and mental strength which we are to have. God has sent into our lives the incomparable gift of our Lord Jesus Christ. He holds the power to defeat sin and guilt and pride and anger and whatever ugly things there are within us.

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But if an individual will not surrender himself to Christ, if she will not offer herself to Him as Lord, then she is not going to know, he is not going to know that victory. And in that life there will be more tragedy than triumph.

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We have been put into the world as free agents. And the things that happen to us that are not good, the things that are of sadness and despair are either our fault or the fault of others who have sinned against God. You know you can get cancer from the cigarette that the other fellow smokes as well as from the one you smoke.

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And so it is with much of life. The evil that is in other people impacts upon us. God is not to be blamed for these things. Rather, He says to us here through the lips of the psalmist,

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"I am ready to help as I gave to you the gift of life, so I am ready to support you in the living of your life." I've lived through a number of earthquakes. The worst one in 1971 was a 6.6 on the Richter scale.

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One of the interesting things about a place when an earthquake strikes is this. Two buildings standing side by side. If one will crumble to the earth and the other, the plaster won't even crack. And you wonder why that is.

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And the answer is to be found in the foundation of the building. If the building is resting on a firm foundation, it will stand. If that foundation is not sure, then all kinds of things might happen. So the life that is rooted and grounded and founded and built upon God,

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understanding God to be its beginning and to be in its course of its days and in its end, that life will be a more peaceful and a more victorious life. But there are many people that don't know that. You ever heard about Korsakoff's syndrome?

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That's a syndrome well-known in psychiatry. Let me give an example. There is a man, and this case is reported by Dr. Oliver Sacks, a very well-known New York psychiatrist, who has a stroke.

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And the stroke affects the visual center of his brain. As a result of the stroke, he is totally blind. But Korsakoff's syndrome is also present. Korsakoff's syndrome means that this man has not only lost his sight,

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but he has lost all memory of ever seeing. In other words, he doesn't think he's any different today than he was yesterday. He can never remember seeing anything. The word "see," the word "image," the word "light," none of this has any meaning to him at all.

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Korsakoff's syndrome is to forget, and then to forget even that you have forgotten. Well, there are people like that. They have forgotten God, and they have forgotten Him so utterly that they have forgotten that they've forgotten Him.

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They have no history of faith. They go through life in a kind of eternal anemone. They're God-made and God-loved, but they're utterly unaware of it. What the psalmist says is start with God as refuge.

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Recognize your beginnings, your foundation, and that God is ready to help you now. That's the first step to peace for a really weary heart. The second thing the psalm says is to recognize that God is present with us. God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in time of trouble.

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Now, you know, some people aren't very good helpers. I mean, there are some people when they help you, you just assume they didn't. They create more problems than they solve. But God, of course, is the greatest of all helpers.

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In the New Testament, Jesus pictures the perfect helper when he refers, of course, to the Good Samaritan. What are the marks of the Good Samaritan's helping? Two. He is there and he does the right thing. A good helper is at the right time and the right place and does the right thing.

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So the psalmist says God is the best of all helpers. He's with us now to do the right thing. The psalmist then goes on to use another phrase. He talks about a river welling up within the city of God.

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Now, remember, this was written by a man who was in a city that was besieged. And one of the things that a besieging army tries to do is to cut off all the water supply going into a city so that the people will have to surrender else they die of thirst. But what the psalmist says is that when God is with you, no matter how you are besieged,

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there is welling up within you a river of living water, which gives you life even when those about you think they are taking life away from you. Now, this promise is made only to the children of God. One must trust God in order to experience this.

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One must yield to God in order to do this. I mean, you cannot refuse to have God in your life and then expect to know this river welling up within you with strength. It's the old lesson, God helps those who help themselves.

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Open yourself to what he can do. Breathe in trust and breathe out the pollution of doubt and fear and anxiety. And then you experience this in-flooding of God's Spirit. Dr. Jonathan Rotter is a professor at the University of Connecticut.

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And he has spent more than 30 years studying trust. What leads people to trust, what trusting people are like, what the results of trusting are. And he's produced a tremendous amount of valuable information. I share only four quick facts with you.

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The first thing he's discovered is that trusting people are less gullible than others. By being trusting people, they have an intuitive sense about what is to be trusted and what is not. Another thing he's discovered is that trusting people are just as intelligent as people who do not trust. Some say, "Well, you have to be stupid in order to be trusting in a world like this."

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The fact of the matter is that on an IQ level, trusting people are every bit as intelligent as those who are not trusting. The third thing he's discovered is this. Trusting people are invariably happier than those who refuse to trust. And why not? They have opened themselves to the experience of love from others and to love from God.

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And the final thing I would point out relating to his study is that trusting people are more trustworthy. An individual who puts confidence in another is the person who most often can accept graciously the confidence of others. Put in terms of God, that simply means this. When you live a God-centered life, the presence of God in you not only makes you trusting of him,

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but also makes you the kind of person that other people can trust. You know how hard it is to help somebody who will not trust you. But when you do find them trusting you, well then you can help them in a multitude of ways. God says to us in Hebrews, "I will never fail you. I will never forsake you."

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He's saying that to those who believe. So if you're embattled, or if you're besieged, or if you're surrounded, or if you find yourself being weary because of the warfare of your days, trust, believe, open yourself to God, surrender to God, rely on God, become addicted to God.

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Yes, you heard me, addicted to God. Drugs destroy, but being addicted to God, that gives dignity. Drugs break down, but being addicted and dependent upon God, that builds up. That's the kind of present help that God is ready to give.

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And it brings peace, and it brings rest to weary hearts. And finally the Psalm says, "And remember, God's word to you is this, 'Be still and know that I am God.'" Now, that's not a request.

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In the context of the Psalm, the nations are roaring at war, you see. And God utters his voice, and he silences them. He says his words in the tone of command. We might translate his words, "Shut up! Remember who's God around here!"

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This is not a word of entreaty. This is a word of authority. Now, the greatest figures of Scripture have been figures who in silence waited upon God. People like Moses and David and Amos and Isaiah, and our Lord Jesus himself.

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He would go off into canyons filled with hush, and there far from the crowd, he would allow the power of God to move into him in such a way that when he went back with the people, that power came through him so magnificently that they reached out just to touch him and feel the strength there. Let me bring that down very practically to these Psalms we're thinking about this summer.

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They are the heart songs of the ages. So are you reading a Psalm every day? Are you memorizing, hiding in your heart, some of these precious words from the Psalm? The Psalms are like a deep lake.

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They reflect the heavens above them and all that is about them, but they also have this deep coolness. The Psalms contain all the other books of the Bible. Prophecy is here, history is here, the epistles are here, the gospels are here. The Psalms are for saints, and the Psalms are also for sinners.

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They speak to people who know a tremendous joy, and they also speak to people who are in the depths of sadness. The Psalms are nothing less than the devotional history of all humankind. The heart songs of a faithful people. So, are you claiming those Psalms for yourself?

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Some silent time to read and remember them? Two fellows who wanted to go elk hunting up in Canada, and they went up just north of the border, and they went to a small airport and they said, "We'd like you to fly us into a lake where there's great elk hunting." The pilot said, "Oh, I could never land you on that lake. It's too small."

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And they said, "Well, the pilot here last year took us up and landed us there." "Well, if someone took you last year, then I'll take you this year." So he flew them up and landed them on that lake. Just enough room. They were almost running up on the other shore before he got the plane stopped.

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They said, "All right, come back in three days and we'll have our elk, and you can pick us up then." The pilot said, "I'll see you then." Three days later, he came back. There were the two hunters standing there, each one with an elk. Elks weighing more than a thousand pounds. So they said, "Well, we're ready to go. Let's load up these elk and we'll go."

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And the pilot said, "Wait a minute. I was able to bring you in here when there were just us in the plane, but if you're going to put two one-thousand-pound elk in this plane, I'll never be able to get this plane off in time. This lake's not long enough." And they said, "Well, we had two elk last year, and the pilot last year got this plane up off the water."

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"Well," he said, "if they did it last year, then I'll do it this year." And he tied the one elk around one pontoon, and he tied the other elk around the other pontoon, and they got him, and he revved the engine, and they rode down the length of that lake, and they took off, just managing to take off, but there were some tall trees there,

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and they hit those trees, and the plane flipped over and crashed. And when the pilot came to, he said, "Where are we? Where are we?" And the one hunter said, "We're about forty-five feet beyond where we crashed last year." [laughter]

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Well, my dearly beloved people, how many times have you resolved that you were going to fly, and then crashed again, because you're trying to do things in the same old way and carrying too much with you? Allow there to be quiet times. Don't break off that habit. Now that you've got it started, begin to dwell in the Psalms, and let them dwell in you.

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I am no unique preacher. There is no magic in any of the words that I share with you. It's all a matter of you and God. If you will hear Him, and hear Him regularly and faithfully, His power will be set abroad in your life. If you turn away, you'll crash just like last year.

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Be still and know. Stop snarling at God. Stop railing at God. Remember His commandments. Remember His rules of health. Remember the Christ He has provided us.

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Read, pray, listen. Focus on Him, and allow His peace to come into your weary heart. You know, this 46th Psalm has been used again and again in history. In the 14th century, when the Tartars were swarming across Russia,

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Saint Sergius led the Russian repulsing of that attack. And the passage of Scripture which he read to his troops every day was the 46th Psalm. In the 16th century, a little monk in Germany broke away from the power and the corruption of the Roman Catholic Church, and Martin Luther built his Reformation on this Psalm.

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He used to say to his young son in the faith, Philip Melanchthon, "Come, Philip, let us sing Psalm 46 together." And his greatest hymn, the hymn with which we began this service, "A Mighty Fortress is Our God," is built on the 46th Psalm. When Cromwell opened his second parliament in England,

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he did so by reading the 46th Psalm and then praying, "O Lord, let England be an emblem of heaven." When John Wesley, the great founder of Methodism, lay dying, his last words were the last words of the 46th Psalm, "The Lord of hosts is with us. The God of Jacob is our refuge." I could bring you other illustrations from Israel and India and our own country, but they're all out of yesterday.

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What about today? If you're besieged, if you're embattled, if you're tired because of the warfare of your days, hear this heart song from so long ago. "God is our refuge and our strength, a very present help in time of trouble.

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Be still and know that he is God. Believe, trust, and you will find rest for your weary heart." Let us pray. "But some doubted."

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Lord, you've led your spirit to write those words in Scripture. Some people, after hearing Jesus, did not believe. And you've written there in the record, "But some doubted." I pray this morning, as an under-shepherd in the kingdom,

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that you'll cause those who doubt to for once in their lives pause to doubt their own doubts. And having raised questions about their weak believing, by thy Spirit enable them to remember whence they've come, to remember how you are available in every moment of every day,

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and to be quiet enough, still enough, to search out and know thee as saving God. I pray this prayer in Jesus' name. Amen. [Applause]