Psalm 46
September 19, 2021
preached by Pastor Doug Cooper
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Time of Reflection Quotations

“If we learn nothing else from this tragedy, we learn that life is short and there is no time for hate.”

~ Sandy Dahl, wife of Flight 93 pilot Jason Dahl, in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, in 2002

“I give speeches around the country. I tell how Stanley (a fellow survivor) and I made our way out of the tower. Life is precious, I tell them. It can be gone in an instant.”

~ Brian Clark, 9/11 survivor

“If God can bring blessing from the broken body of Jesus and glory from something that’s obscene as the cross, He can bring blessing from my problems and my pain and my unanswered prayer.”

~ Anne Graham Lotz (1948-present), contemporary author

“If you really want people to be tough…make them committed to some worldview that puts today’s temporary pain in the context of a larger hope… People are really tough only after they have taken a leap of faith for some truth… We live in an age when it’s considered sophisticated to be disenchanted. But people who are enchanted are the real tough cookies.”

~ David Brooks in “The New York Times,” August 30, 2016

“For the postmodernists, there are many stories, but no overarching truth by which they can be assessed. They are simply stories. The church’s affirmation is that the story it tells, embodies, and enacts is the true story and that others are to be evaluated by reference to it.”

~ Lesslie Newbigin (1909-1998), British theologian, missiologist, missionary and author

“God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing.”

~ C.S. Lewis (1898-1963), British writer and lay theologian

“If God be our God, He will give us peace in trouble. When there is a storm without, He will make peace within. The world can create trouble in peace, but God can create peace in trouble.”

~ Thomas Watson (1620-1686), English Puritan preacher and author

Sermon Passage

Psalm 46 (NIV)

For the director of music. Of the Sons of Korah. According to alamoth. A song.

¹ 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,
³ though its waters roar and foam
and the mountains quake with their surging.

⁴ 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.

⁸ Come and see what the Lord has done,
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 He says, “Be still, and know that I am God;
I will be exalted among the nations,
I will be exalted in the earth.”

¹¹ The Lord Almighty is with us;
the God of Jacob is our fortress.