Calm in the Chaos

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Transcript:

We’re going to talk a little bit this morning about chaos and about peace. I’ve had chaos on my mind all week. It was a three-day week at school, and I think all the students thought, well, if we’re only going to be here for three days, we’ll do zero days worth of work, and we’ll just have fun all week.

So it was chaos, even more so than it would be. And they’re going to pay for it when we get back tomorrow. Mark my words.

And I was so anxious to be out Wednesday afternoon and be out for fall break for a couple of days. And then I realized my children were on fall break as well. And it was chaos at the house.

Benjamin and Madeline loved them dearly, but they were crazy for three days straight. And I found myself saying, these kids need to go back to school. and I realized that, man, I’d have to go back to school too and I don’t think I’m ready for fall break to be over but there was chaos all week and you all have known me long enough now it’s probably not a surprise that I’m a little bit of a news junkie a politics junkie and I don’t listen to music in the car very much anymore I listen to mostly news and even today on the way down here I was listening to news on the radio and there is chaos going on in the world around us hadn’t turned on the TV lately, there is chaos.

They were, you know, we’ve got Ebola in Dallas. I never thought I’d live to say those words, but we have Ebola in Dallas. They were reading an article on the radio today, Six Reasons to Panic About Ebola, because I’m sure none of us could think of any.

But they were explaining some of the ways it mutates, and oh my goodness, it’s terrifying. And they’re talking about best-case scenario. There could be some 10,000 people in Liberia alone with Ebola by the end of the year, and they didn’t have any predictions for America.

But that was the best-case scenario. And if it gets any worse from there, it would be hard to keep it from spreading here anymore. So we’ve got that.

I mean, people are already canceling plans. They’re talking about declaring a disaster in Dallas County because of that, which doesn’t mean everybody goes into a panic, but it means they start getting serious about preparedness. And that just sounds like chaos to me.

We’ve got, in the news also, we’ve got ISIS this week. Aren’t you glad we have ISIS to take our minds off of Ebola? And ISIS is a scary deal also.

I mean, they’re not here. Well, they might be here. Some of them are here.

But as far as their Islamic State, it’s not here. It’s over there. but they’re beheading people.

They’re about to take over Baghdad. They’re close to crossing the Turkish border. I heard on one particular radio show this morning a story about them.

I don’t know if they’ve kidnapped Iraqi soldiers or if they’ve got Iraqi soldiers who’ve defected over to them and they’re giving them flight training. And I thought, that’s bizarre. And then they went on to say, for the three jet fighters that they’ve stolen.

ISIS has an air force. Are you kidding me? Chaos.

A year ago, we didn’t know who ISIS was, and now the whole country is worried about ISIS. What are they going to do to us? What do we need to do to them?

There’s a story that was discussed up at Southgate Wednesday night, didn’t even get to the lesson, about the mayor of Houston has issued a subpoena against a group of pastors in the city of Houston demanding that they turn over all their notes and audio and all their correspondence, their letters to their members on anything to do with homosexuality or gender identity or the mayor herself. And I’m sitting there reading this story and going, this can’t be America. I thought we had a First Amendment and a Fourth Amendment.

There’s no way I’m turning over my notes over a subpoena. What is happening? I listen to this stuff on the news and some of it makes you panic and some of it makes you mad and you think, what is happening in the world around us?

Incidentally, I’ve written, I’ve showed it to Brother Shank already, but I’ve written a letter to the mayor of Houston saying, you know, you don’t have to sue all the churches in Houston. If you want to know what they’re talking about, most pastors are more than glad. If you say, what are you teaching on?

They will tell you more than you ever wanted to know because they’re so excited that somebody wants to know. I’ve written a letter to the mayor of Houston saying, why don’t you just ask them? Instead of suing everybody, why don’t you just ask them?

And by the way, telling her, so if I end up on the news or on a watch list myself, you’ll know why. Telling her, incidentally, if they don’t care to explain to you what they’re teaching and what the Bible teaches on these things, you just come to Lindsay, Oklahoma, go to church with us, and we’ll be glad to explain it to you. So if I end up on the news, that’s why.

But chaos all over the place. The things it seems like we used to be able to count on. We’re the United States of America.

Nobody’s going to mess with us. And along comes ISIS. We have freedom of speech in this country and the government can’t search through our things without probable cause, without a warrant.

Then comes the mayor of Houston. We have or have had the best healthcare system in the world that we seem to put our trust in a lot. We’ve got some incredible doctors and some incredible knowledge in this country.

And then along comes Ebola and the CDC is caught with egg on their faces. And folks, we are on the brink of chaos, it feels like. I don’t know that we actually are, but it feels to me like we’re on the brink of chaos.

And it’s enough to make you panic. You start thinking, come Lord Jesus, I’m just ready to be done with this. But then we look at it and I think, okay, I could pick a date at random.

I could pick a date at random, go back five years, go back 10 years. What was going on on this date? And then I realize it seems like nothing really new here.

We just sort of float from one set of crises to the next. The world is, this is nothing new. The world is always in chaos.

The world we live in is always in an uproar about something. We really do just go from one crisis to the next, it seems. And sometimes we’re in chaos and we’re in crisis in our own personal lives. And we get to points in life where we think, I don’t care what’s going on with ISIS in Iraq.

I don’t care what’s going on with Ebola in Dallas. I’m struggling right here where I am. Maybe it’s family things.

Maybe it’s a job situation. Maybe we got a bad report from the doctor. But all it takes is one bit of bad news, and our world goes into chaos, doesn’t it?

And our world goes into crisis. And we think, where is the peace? We just want peace.

I don’t know about you, but all I really want out of life is peace. Everybody leave me alone. I don’t mean don’t call me or anything like that.

But as far as drama, chaos, all that stuff, Just leave me alone. Let me do my job. Let me raise my children and enjoy the people that I care about.

And let me have a peaceful life. Just keep the chaos to yourself. But it doesn’t work that way.

We don’t live in a vacuum. But so many of us, all we want out of life is peace. And where are we supposed to find it?

At an international level, there is no peace in the world. At a personal level, often there’s no peace in the world. But what I want to talk to you today about is about how to have peace in the midst of the chaos, in the midst of the conflict.

You know, peace is not the absence of chaos. Peace doesn’t mean that everything is quiet and everything is calm and everything is going your way. That’s not the only way that we have peace.

I can’t remember if I’ve told the story here. I’ve told the story so many times, I don’t remember where I heard it. I don’t even know if it’s a true story.

You hear preachers tell stories from the pulpit as though they’re true, And you think, that can’t possibly be true. And they’re preacher stories. And if I don’t know it’s true, I’m going to tell you that because I don’t want to lie.

Is it okay to lie, Brother Shank, if it’s just a preacher story? No, it’s not okay to lie. I don’t know if this is a true story or not, but I love it.

And it’s stuck with me for years because it so well illustrates this concept. That I heard a story, true or not, that a man was wanting to paint. He was a painter.

He wanted to paint a picture of peace, to illustrate peace, because somebody had asked him for a painting, for whatever reason, had commissioned a painting to deal with peace. And so he drew, he painted several things, a lovely mountain scene and fresh fallen snow, and it was beautiful. And he looked at this and said, this is not, the guy who commissioned the painting said, this is not what I had in mind.

Try something else. And I guess you can do that if you’re willing to pay for it, if you’re commissioning a painting. And so there was another scene with, you know, maybe a tropical beach.

It’s been so long since I’ve heard the story. I don’t even remember all the things. But maybe it was a tropical beach, palm trees and lovely ocean waves sort of just gently breaking on the shore.

And so that’s not what I had in mind. That’s not really what I had in mind. And so the artist goes a third time and paints a picture.

And you see a tree being whipped around in a windstorm. and you see the clouds behind it, and it’s dark, and it’s ugly. We know what that looks like.

The sky just looks evil. And you can see the tree is being whipped back and forth, and stuff’s blowing around. And he shows it to the man and says, is this what you had in mind?

How in the world is that a picture of peace? And yet in the tree that’s being whipped around in the painting is a little nest in one of the branches, where there are a few baby birds sleeping in the nest, and a mama bird with her wings spread over, you know how they do, and they’re asleep in the nest. Now again, I don’t know if that’s a true story or not. I’d love to see a picture of this painting if it is.

But whether it’s true or not, it kind of illustrates to me that story. You see the peace that we have, the real peace. If you want peace that’s the absence of conflict, absence of chaos, if you want the picture of the fresh fallen snow, if you want the waves gently breaking on the tropical beach, you might get that for a few minutes out of life.

But the peace that’s available to us, the kind of peace that God makes available to us, really the only peace we’re going to find in this world is that third kind of peace, where we’re able to sleep soundly through the storm. Peace doesn’t mean the storm is gone from around us. But peace means we have the inner comfort where we’re able to sleep peacefully, able to sleep soundly in the midst of the storm.

So what we’re going to talk about this morning, Psalm chapter 46. We’re going to start in verse 1. It says, God is our refuge and strength.

a very present help in trouble. Therefore will not we fear though the earth be removed and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea. Before we go on much further I want to just stop and look at verse 1 first of all where it says God is our refuge.

Now we know what that word means we know what refuge is it’s a place you run to but we don’t really have in our modern world we don’t really have something that we would call refuge and understand this as they would. in their day and age they had uh in in in their day and age for most of human history really you’ve you’ve lived uh under constant threat of of attack maybe an invading army would come in and burn your village down maybe marauders maybe robbers would come and you know take everything and harm whoever they wanted to they would begin to build walls around cities and not everybody could live in a walled city. Or eventually they’d build castles.

Not everybody could live in the castle. And a lot of times you’d have villages. For example, Jerusalem had walls around it.

That didn’t mean everybody lived in a walled city. Sometimes you’d have villages that might be a mile or two from Jerusalem. Or you’d have people who built their houses outside castle walls in the Middle Ages.

And the idea was, even though you didn’t live within these walls, you would hopefully get word that an invading army was coming, and you would run to the city walls. You would run to be let inside. You would run to behind the castle walls.

That would be your refuge. Now, we live so relatively safely and securely in our modern world that we don’t fully appreciate what it means to have a place of refuge, especially here in the United States. The country is our refuge for the most part.

They would have understood you’re living out in a little brick house on the outskirts of town and there’s an invading army coming and there’s nothing that stands between you and them and a future of rape, murder, and pillage but to get to those walls, but to get to the city, to get behind the walls of Jerusalem or Jericho or wherever it is before those gates are shut, to lock the invaders outside and hopefully defend them off long enough that they either die or they get tired and go home where you can live safely behind those walls that are your only home. they would have very well understood this concept of refuge in a way that we cannot. And when it says God is our refuge and our strength, we look at that and we say, what a nice thought.

What an encouraging thought. Folks, this was not meant to be just, I won’t say it’s not meant to be an encouraging thought, but guys, let’s not just leave it at an encouraging thought. This is a life and death, you can take this to the bank, you can bet your life on it kind of refuge.

When it says God is our refuge, he is the city wall we hide behind. He is the castle we run to for refuge when the enemy, when the world around us starts going out of control. He is a place and a person we can trust our lives to.

God is our refuge and our strength. And we think of that as running to our father’s arms, and yes, that’s true. As his child, we run to our father’s arms for comfort.

But folks, even though that’s taught elsewhere in the scriptures, we need to think of this for what it is. We run to him as to castle walls to save our lives. And you know what?

He’s able to do it. God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in times of trouble. For that matter, we don’t even have to run miles to get to the castle walls because he’s a very present help in times of trouble.

It’s as though the castle was on wheels and could follow you around. Wherever you go, God is there. again another one of these concepts I don’t completely understand but I believe it to be true because it’s taught in the Bible Psalm 139 David talks about if I if I descend down to hell you’re there if I run here you’re there I can’t even remember all the places he talks about but basically he says where can I go to get away from your presence not that he’s trying to but says there’s nowhere I can go to flee from God’s presence because God is always there folks God is a refuge and our strength, and he’s a very present help in times of trouble.

He is right there with us in times of difficulty, in times of fear. He says, therefore, we will not fear, though the earth be removed and the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea, though the waters thereof roar and be troubled, though the mountains shake with the swelling thereof. And this is so poetic and so beautiful sounding that we read over this and just kind of glaze over it.

Think about what he’s really saying here. Everything is out of control. He says here, will not fear though the earth be removed.

Where’s it gone to? And though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea. This sounds to me like such upheaval that the earth is dissolving and being carried.

It sounds like quicksand. And we take for granted pretty much that the ground is there. It’s water table rose, everything was liquefied.

All the buildings that we just, they’ve been there 50 years, we expect them to be there from now on. They begin to sink. There’s nowhere for us to stand.

We fall, we sink, all these things. It would be terrifying, wouldn’t it? I watch these on the news again.

I watch where they’ll show every once in a while in Florida. These big sinkholes just open up under people’s houses and the house is gone. I heard them say on the news one time, and they believe the house is inside the sinkhole.

Where else would it be? I don’t understand that. But these sinkholes open up in random places and people’s houses are just gone.

A friend of mine from the church in Arkansas I pastored lived in Florida for several years and talked about the sinkholes and the hurricanes and alligators and giant pythons down in the Everglades. Everybody talks about Florida like it’s this paradise. To me it sounds like hell and I would not want to live there.

I might want to visit from time to time, but I don’t want to live where the ground just opens up. Imagine that. If the ground just opened up, the thing we take for granted, it’s steadfast, it’s firm, it’s not supposed to move.

Although we’ve seen that’s not always the case here lately. It’s not supposed to move. It’s just there.

And imagine it’s gone. There is no firm foundation for us anymore. That would be terrifying if that really happened.

though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea. And he says here, though the water thereof roar and be troubled. And we could ask people on the Gulf Coast what kind of damage troubled waters can do.

We see the destructive power of all of this. I remember driving a few years ago through the area around Biloxi, Mississippi. And I think it was just a year or so after Hurricane Katrina, they still had not rebuilt everything.

And there’s a house there that belonged to Jefferson Davis, who was president of the Confederacy. So you know that’s got to be an old house. That house has probably been there for 200 years.

And you’d think that it’s been there for 200 years. It’s not going anywhere. And yet a little bit of troubled water is just gone.

And though the waters thereof roar and be troubled, and the mountains shake with the swelling thereof. And the earth, even the mountains, we look at the mountains and they’re huge. I don’t know how many of you remember driving through Norman on I-35 years ago.

There used to be that what they called Mount Williams or Bullet Hill out next to the highway. Used to be a naval artillery range back in World War II. Not that I was there, I’ve just been told.

And I heard they were going to tear it down. I thought, how do you tear down a hill? And it wasn’t even a big hill, but I thought, how do you, it’s a lot of trouble to go to.

Try to move all that dirt, and it took them forever to get that thing torn down and leveled off. You go out south of here toward the Arbuckles or toward the Wichita’s, and you’ve got even bigger mountains that really aren’t that big compared to some others. And you think, there’s no way somebody could move that.

And yet he’s talking about a time when everything’s so out of control that even the mountains are moving and crumbling. I talked to my father-in-law on Thursday. He just got back from Nicaragua, from doing ministry down there.

And he said right before he left, there was a 7. 5 magnitude earthquake just off the coast of where they were. and talked about how it woke him up in the middle of the night, and he put on clothes and ran, I mean, outdoor clothes, pajamas I’m sure he’s wearing, but he put on outdoor clothes and went running outside.

And he was trying to describe it to me. There were not words to describe what that’s like when the earth begins to. .

. And we see here David talking about a time where everything is out of control. The ground, the water, it’s not just circumstances.

The whole earth seems it’s going crazy. And there’s nothing steady, nothing secure left in our world that we can count on. That is where it’s supposed to be and is doing what it’s supposed to be doing, except for that refuge and strength, that very present help in times of trouble.

And he says, because of that, no matter what else happens, we will not fear. He says, there’s a river. I need to hurry up here.

There’s a river. The streams whereof shall make glad the city of God, the holy place of the tabernacles of the Most High. I believe that’s most likely speaking of the living water that the Bible talks about coming from God.

God is in the midst of her, in the midst of the city. She shall not be moved. God shall help her.

And that right early. The heathen raged. The kingdoms were moved.

He uttered his voice. The earth melted. He’s talking about God being in the midst of Jerusalem.

And he’s talking about the ability for Jerusalem then to rest easily even when it’s under siege because God was present. God was helping them. And he talks about the heathen raged.

and again they lived in a time when you could very easily be invaded you know you weren’t going to hear about hear about it on the news you weren’t going to have diplomatic talks the UN wasn’t going to get involved you just get some bloodthirsty king who thought I want your land and I’m going to kill whoever I have to kill to get it and so he says the heathen raged and we’ve heard the stories probably about Genghis Khan and Attila the Hun and men like this who just whatever they wanted they’re going to come in and take it. And they were ferocious, vicious men. He says the heathen raged.

Yeah, these people around us get out of control and there’s bloodshed and there’s violence and they get out of control. And it says the kingdoms were moved. And we see that if you look at the long view of Old Testament history, I was trying to explain, we were talking about the history of Daniel in history class a few weeks ago, and they kept getting wrong on their history test, which country it was that carried the Jews into captivity, which country it was that carried Daniel into captivity.

They kept saying it was the Persians. I kept trying to get them to understand, no, the Persians came later. Well, I thought Daniel worked for the king of Persia.

He did. That’s because the kingdoms were always changing. Yes, the Babylonians took over the Jews, then the Persians took over the Babylonians, then the Greeks took over the Persians, then the Romans took over the Greeks, and so on and so forth.

And with the war and the violence, Nothing was constant and the kingdoms were constantly changing hands and power was constantly changing hands. And he says here, when the heathen rages, when the world gets out of control, they can make the kingdoms of men spin out of control and they can make power change hands. And they think they’re so strong and they’re so mighty and they’re so powerful.

He says, but then God uttered his voice and the earth melted. Now, even though it’s speaking in past tense, I think it’s probably talking about the future. But you know what?

The world can rage out of control all at once and think it’s doing exactly what it wants and we can think we’re having our own way and doing exactly what we want to do. But God opens his mouth and everything stops. Don’t get me started how I talked last week about with just the words of his mouth, God spoke into existence things that not only had no one ever thought of before, but there had been no one to think of.

God said, let there be light and there was light. trying to explain to my students, I’m not even sure there was darkness before that. There was nothing.

Darkness is just the absence of light, and there was not even a such thing as light for there to be darkness. They said, so what did it look like? I said, to who?

We can’t even conceive of what there was before everything started, and yet God, with the very words of his mouth, spoke all of this into existence. It’s impressive that God formed the mountains, that God formed the earth, that he formed the stars in the universe, I’m equally as impressed and in awe that God formed the atoms and the tiny little particles and the charges and the bonds that hold everything together. And you know what?

If he could create it with the word of his mouth, he can stop what’s going on with it with the word of his mouth. And he can put an end to it with the word of his mouth. And so when it says, when the heathen raged and the kingdoms were moved, so what?

Because he uttered his voice and the earth melted. It’s reminding us that no matter how powerful this world seems to be, no matter how powerful the things that are harming us or bothering us in this world seem to be, that God is a million, million, million times more powerful and that there’s nothing for us to fear. The Lord of hosts is with us.

The God of Jacob is our refuge. Selah. Come see 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 sunder. He burneth the chariot in fire.

Why doesn’t that sound good? Be still and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the heathen.

I will be exalted in the earth. I’m so tired of this verse. Not that I hate it.

Not that I don’t believe it’s true. But if I had a nickel for every time my mother has quoted this verse to me in the last 13 months, I would be a wealthy man. I would pay off all of your houses for you or whatever else and have money left over.

Something will go on with job or family things and I’ll talk to my family about it and my mother will say, just be still. I know that. I know that.

If I’m any more still, I’m going to be going in reverse. I’m just standing here waiting for God to show me what to do next. I know that.

Quit telling me. But you know what? It’s true.

as much as it may not be what you want to hear in the moment of trial, in the moment of difficulty, and you’re complaining and you’re whining and saying, what am I supposed to do next? And somebody says, just be still. As much as it’s not what you want to hear in that moment, it’s right.

Be still and know that he’s God. Running around like a crazy person, trying to fix what’s going on with the world, trying to fix you. First of all, we can’t fix our own problems most of the time.

We can cause them. Oh boy, we’re good at that. We can cause them, but we usually can’t fix them.

We can’t fix our own problems, let alone other people’s problems. So instead of running around like crazy people, trying to obsess about everybody’s problems and trying to fix them, be still. What’s it mean, be still and know that he’s God? Understand that he’s got this.

Understand that he’s in charge, that he’s in control. Be still and know that I’m God. I will be exalted among the heathen.

I will be exalted in the earth. If there’s one thing that we can count on, other than God being in control, It’s that we know who God is and how he operates. Sometimes we may not know exactly what he’s got planned.

We may not know, there’s a lot about God that we don’t know because he’s beyond our comprehension. But when it comes to the way he works things out, we may not know the specifics, but we are told in the scriptures that he is working things together for our good and for his glory. Not necessarily our short-term good.

We can look at something and say, well, God, I see how you work that out, but how’s that good for me? Well, in the long term, there’s something we’re not seeing that it’s for our good, but also for his glory. And it’s not for the good of his glory to abandon his children in times of trouble.

God’s not glorified in that because God is glorified as a God who keeps his promises and does what he says he’ll do. God is glorified as a God who can handle any problem, any circumstance, any situation. God is glorified as a God who can do the impossible.

And so when we know, be still and know that I’m God, I will be exalted, I will be glorified, he says. I will be exalted among the heathen. We can know that even though I’m not sure how God’s going to work this situation out, even though I’m not sure what God is going to do when I just be still and know, I do know who God is and I do know the kinds of things that he’s working for.

And abandoning me to the world is not what’s going to bring him glory and it’s not what he’s going to do. And then it tells us in verse 11, the Lord of hosts is with us. The God of Jacob is our refuge, Selah.

I think I’ve skipped over a verse in there already where it talks about the Lord of hosts. Let’s talk about that for just a minute. And then I’ll get to point one of the message.

It says the Lord of hosts. It doesn’t mean like the hosts of a dinner party. The hosts of the Lord are his mighty armies.

Now, depending on the context, does that mean angels? Does that mean, I don’t know, but I know it means you don’t ask God you and what army. I remember hearing a joke years ago when Saddam Hussein tried to assassinate George Bush, the first George Bush, on a trip to Kuwait.

And then that just started things again between our countries. And a comedian said, you never antagonize a man who can answer the question, you and what army? Well, you know what?

He’s the Lord of hosts, and by that very title, it means He is commander of a massive army. When He’s the Lord of hosts, He and all of the power of heaven are watching over us and protecting us. Again, that doesn’t always mean it’s going to be short-term what we think it ought to be.

Okay, God, if you’re watching over me, why did this happen? God, if you’re watching over me, why did I lose my child? God, if you’re watching over me, why was I diagnosed with cancer?

God, if you’re watching over me, and folks, the point is we don’t know. We don’t always understand what his thought process is, but we know and can believe that whatever he’s doing is for our good and for his glory. It says the Lord of hosts is with us.

The God of Jacob is our refuge, Selah. So point one, first thing we need to understand out of this passage, as far as peace and calm in the midst of chaos, is that peace comes when we stop struggling. That is opposite of everything that we are taught, everything that we’re led to believe, especially as Americans.

We want to go out and fix everything. We’re taught, I mean, not as much anymore, but even when I was growing up, we were taught self-sufficiency, you do what you, you take care of yourself, you don’t need help from anybody. Folks, when it comes to the spiritual realm, 

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