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[Music] [Music] [Music] [Music]

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♪ Shall have sent him to the hills ♪ ♪ All alone ♪ ♪ Ooh, shall have sent him to the hills ♪ [Music]

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[Singing] ♪ Who can the Prince and Queen of the Hills of the North ♪ ♪ Who can the Prince and Queen of the Hills of the North ♪ [Music]

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[Chorus singing] [Singing] [Singing] [Music]

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♪ Is that ♪ ♪ That we love ♪ ♪ And hear ♪ ♪ Call ♪

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♪ Is ♪ ♪ But don't we love ♪ ♪ Our mother ♪ ♪ Who has not lifted up his soul ♪

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♪ And to vanity ♪ ♪ Oh, I could not lift it up at all ♪ ♪ And to vanity ♪ ♪ For you and me ♪

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♪ Not born ♪ ♪ To defeat his neighbor ♪ ♪ But one ♪ ♪ Don't think ♪

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♪ It's over ♪ [Choir singing] ♪ I will sing from the heart of his salvation ♪ ♪ I shall sing from the heart of his salvation ♪

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♪ I shall sing from the heart of his salvation ♪ [Music] [Singing] [Chorus singing]

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[Choir singing] [Music] Our scripture, Psalm 46. God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.

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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 roar and be troubled, though the mountains shake with the swelling thereof. There is the 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.

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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. 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 thunder; he burneth the chariot in fire.

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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. The subject of the message, "Refuge from Rage." refuge from rage. The Lord of hosts is with us. The God of Jacob is our refuge.

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The 46th Psalm describes a situation in which God's people are homebound. They are at home, shut up in the city of Jerusalem. They are unable to get out. They are unable to enjoy the freedom of locomotion.

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They are not free to go where they want to go. They are not free to do what they want to do. They are homebound, shut up within the walls of Jerusalem. It so happens that Jerusalem is under attack.

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The enemy is at the gates of the city. The Assyrian army is outside trying to batter down the walls. The well-established defenses are besieged by a powerful army. It's a time of danger.

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National security is in jeopardy. The enemy is strong. The battle is intense. It's a time when human anxieties and human frustrations are imminent. God's people are in trouble. Shut up in the city of Jerusalem, homebound. It seems that they are trapped in their own home. The enemy is waiting to capture them.

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And the question in such an hour is how will we come out? Will we survive? How will we make it? When danger lurks all around us, when we are hemmed in and we see no way out. It's not unusual to be afraid. In fact, it's the normal thing to be fearful in such conditions and circumstances.

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Alfred Lloyd Tennyson gives a vivid description of the event which is the basis of our text in his poem entitled "The Destruction of Sennacherib." He helps us see the hopeless plight of Jerusalem. He says, "The Syrian came down like a wolf on the foal, but something happened to the wolf that saved the foal. Some kind

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of natural calamity struck the Assyrians. Perhaps it was an earthquake. Some historians have guessed that it might have been a plague. But the Assyrians lost 185,000 soldiers, and the survivors were forced to retreat. So the Jews were delivered. And what happened was strange and miraculous. They attributed their deliverance to God.

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They sang this hymn of joy celebrating their deliverance. God is our refuge and strength. A very present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change,

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though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea, and though the waters roar and foam, though the mountains shake with its tumult, the heathen rage, the kingdoms totter, the utter of his voice the earth melts, the Lord of hosts is with us, the God of Jacob is our Well, in the course of life, things don't always go the way we would like for them to go. But life

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nevertheless is beautiful and life is good. Here is a time when there is rage. The things that are out of joint are looked upon as permanent, but while they have been looked upon as permanent, we find that now their permanence is under question. The mountains, oh how beautiful are the mountains. And when we look at the mountains, we think of the mountains as not

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only being so majestic and so beautiful, but we think about the mountains as being permanent. We expect the mountains to remain from year to year the same. But here, the mountains shake. The mountains are removed. The mountains that have been regarded as so dependable are removed into the midst of the sea. And that's the way it is in life. The mountains shake.

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All of us have certain mountains as we think of our dreams, as we think of our hopes, as we think of the things that we would like to attain, our aspirations. We have certain mountains But here the mountains not only shake, but the mountains are shattered. Our dreams are often shattered before our eyes.

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And not only do the mountains shake, but the earth, my, my, the earth, that on which we stand and we come to rely upon the earth as the basis of our being and to somehow undergird us, but here the earth is quaking, the ground underneath our feet, the foundation of existence quakes. There is no earthly support. The ground quakes on which we thought we could depend,

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is removed from us. And then not only that, but the waters roar and are troubled. There is trouble everywhere. The shifting scenes are filled with discard and disaster. That which was thought to be established and permanent is in tumult. And then the heathen rage. Governments are at war with each other. National security is at stake. And it seems that there is nothing

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to hang on to. Oh, we would say let's run to the mountains, but there's no hiding place there. I went to the rocks to hide my face and the rocks cried out, no hiding place. So where is a place of refuge from the storm? The sea is in tumult, the waters are fussing, foaming, and feuding. Where may one find refuge from rage? When there

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is rage, not only rage all around us, in nature, the calamities of nature, no place to hide. We look for security from the government and we expect the government to take care of us, but we find more and more that the government cannot really take care of us. Government can do some things, but there are a lot of things that government can't do for us. So

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So here, here, here they are, homebound, shut up, in their own city, no place to hide, a captive in their own home, and the storm is raging outside. You know, people have a tendency to become hysterical at a time like this. In such a time as this when one is tempted to go to pieces and we cry out, "Where shall

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I go?" It's a cry of bewilderment. It's a cry of frustration. It's a cry of dereliction.

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"Where shall I go in such a time as this?" You know how we behave when a storm is coming. people run and they pull the shades down, little children run and get underneath the bed. Where to hide? And then they find that the house is shaking, but not only

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the house is shaking, but the ground is shaking. No place to hide. And the question comes, where shall I go? This is the way life is. New York City, the police received a call from a young mother in an East Harlem apartment and she's hysterical. She says my dog ate my baby.

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The girl was just four days old. Twelve days, not just four days old, but 12 hours from the hospital. Four days old and 12 hours from the hospital. Home now. And home is made up of just two rooms and a kitchen on the sixth floor, furnished with a rug, folding chair, nothing else, no bed, no crib, and her dog, a German Shepherd, had

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been fed for a time, but now the dog has not been fed for five days. And she left the baby, says, on the floor with the dog to protect it. She had bought the dog just a short time before to protect her from danger. 24 years of age. and she'd come to New York three years before from a small Ohio community. She was employed until the fifth month of her pregnancy, which was due to rape,

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but she didn't report that to the police. She wanted that baby. And so she brought that child into the world, having prepared as best she could by reading books about child care, taking seven prenatal checkups at the Bellevue Hospital. And when her labor pains came, she fed the dog with the last food in the apartment, went along to the hospital.

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And when she left four days later, as I said, she had six dollars in her pocket and a baby in her arms. And she took a cab home. The meter said four dollars and the driver demanded a one dollar tip. And when she asked his assistance in getting upstairs, he drove off. Oh, the hospital had given her enough formula for three feedings for the baby,

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and rather than spend her remaining dollar on food for herself and the dog, she saved it for a bus ride back to the hospital to get more formula for the baby. And having slept with the baby on a doubled-up rug, she left the baby and dog in the morning. It was 50 degrees outside, too cold she thought to take the baby with her, and she had no warm baby clothes.

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She got back at mid-morning to the horrifying scene, which seems almost impossible to imagine in our time. The dog had eaten her baby. And you know what, we sort of feel that we are safe in the city. We'd like to think that we are unsafe when we are far out in the country living alone by ourselves.

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But in a crowded city, we'd like to think that we're safe. And in a big city like New York, where there's great police protection and all of those things, we sort of think that maybe there's a refuge from rage. But here there is no refuge in the city no safe place from which to hide

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But here the psalmist cries out that though life may be raging all around you That there is a river. Oh There is a river the streams whereof

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Make glad the city of God what he does is he takes us to a great city Situated on the banks of a river and you know all of the great cities of ancient times except one was situated on the banks of a river

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Well when we look at Nineveh Nineveh was on the banks of the Tigris Babylon was on the banks of the Euphrates Thebes was on the banks of the Nile

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Rome on the banks of the Tiber all of the great ancient capitals, but one that's Jerusalem Jerusalem was not located on the banks of a river Jerusalem you see is 15 miles from the Jordan River And

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It's 2,000 feet above the riverbed Which made any type of irrigation from the river impossible And how did Jerusalem get its water?

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Well, there were springs Surfacing out of the rocks and out of the springs that came on the rocks the water came and There was the strength that they needed.

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There was water which they could have used for whatever cause they so desired. You see, it was self-contained, and they had an inner source of water within the city walls, a river whereof the city of God is made glad, an inner source of strength. when life seems to be raging, when people all around you are going to pieces, when people

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all around you are fussing and there's a bombing of all kinds of opposition all around you, that somehow to have an inner source of strength, an inner source of strength and power that gives us courage to go. So in the midst of the tumult and the afflictions, there is an inner source of strength. The source of rage is without, but there is an inner source of strength within. I remember a man who had gotten up in years that he retired and just as he came to retirement he built a home, a new home.

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And he took me into that home and was showing me around and it was well laid out and for the most part it was like other homes, as far as the kitchen, the living room, and there was the family room and so on. But then he had another room. It was sort of a secret room, and he took me down into the basement, and here he had his sort of storm cellar. This is the place that he had thought of reserved if the storm should come.

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This was a place that he could go down into, and there he could be secure. There he felt he could be safe. When the winds were raging outside, here he could find security and safety and be at peace. And this is what the psalmist is talking about, an inner source of strength.

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You know, you might talk about getting your strength somewhere else, but when somehow we find ourselves at a period in our lives where all of the outside support that we once knew is gone, and there is no river that runs into the city, there is inside of us that source of strength and health and hope that enables us to carry on. God, he said, is in the midst of her. That's the secret. God is in the midst of her. That's the mystery of it all.

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God is in the midst of her. How, how are we delivered? How have we come through danger, seen and unseen? That secret is God. God is in the midst of her. God is that inner source of strength.

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He is that peace from confusion. He is that courage in time of danger. He's that hope in the midst of despair. He's our refuge from rage. That's the answer. That's the tremendous mystery. The Lord of hosts is with us. God of Jacob is our refuge. That's the way life is. If we keep living, we'll come to times in our lives when we will find rage.

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The tempest will be raging. Mountains will shake. The earth will quake. Waters will roar and foam.

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But he says, "The Lord of hosts." The Lord of hosts. You know what that means? That means that the Lord of all of the hosts, of so to speak, the forces of goodness that may be there all around us, God is over those forces. Sure, we've got forces that may be against us. Disease, desertion, discouragement, loneliness. All those forces may be arrayed against us, but there is God with all of the hosts of forces of strength and help and hope.

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(muffled speaking) [BLANK_AUDIO]