God is our Refuge and Strength Sermon

Psalm 16:1-6 Sermon Text

“God our refuge and protector”

Man has problems  and needs that only God can solve (1)

• David’s prayer,our prayer
• Preserve (guard, protect, hedge me) me, O God
  • Emotionally
  • Physically
  • Spiritually
  • Relationally
  • Financially
  • Lord prayer, deliver me from the evil one
    • Lead me not into temptation
  • For the saint
  • For the sinner
• O God
  • Why? Because we can’t preserve ourselves
  • We can only preserve ourselves so much
    • Rock bottom
    • Give up
    • Depression
    • Even suicide
    • “Remember, all the answers you need are inside of you; you only have to become quiet enough to hear them.” Debbie Ford, secular humanism at its finest
      • Only true if 1 corinthians 6:19 is true, that your body is the temple of the holy spirit
  • Psalms 121 describes why we pray to God to preserve us
• So we have problems and needs and we understand that we have a God to preserve us, how do we access this help

We must take refuge in God (1b)

• “In you I take refuge”
  • Tried to stay in cold apartment with heat off
  • Or imagine a tornado or hurricane ominously coming and staying outside instead of accessing shelter
  • We understand and believe God is a refuge, psalm 46 God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble, but the keyword in our text here is the verb, take refuge
  • We don’t just allow life to hit us with wave after wave, at somepoint we cry out like David and say “preserve me oh Lord in you I take refuge!”
• How do we take this refuge?
  • Prayer
    • Psalm 34:15-17
    • Hebrews 4:16
  • Presence-worship, prayer, meditation, studying His word
    • Psalm 91
  • promise-It sometime seems like He isn’t preserving, that He isn’t providing refuge, in these moments we have to hold on to His promises
    • Numbers 23:19-20
    • Romans 10:17 hear the words of Christ in your situation daily

God in His role as refuge and protector is a privilege only for the saints (3-6)

• The text assigns to sets of people and how God responds to them
  • Saints, whom He calls excellent ones and delights in
  • Those who run after another god, whom God won’t even say their name
  • What is their lot?
    • Sorrows, ignoring (4)
      • They are out in that proverbial storm without shelter
      • They try to get shelter and they are ignored
      • They are left to their own devices…
      • Their prayers are ignored
    • Trust in the Lord (5) , good outcomes and a beautiful inheritance (6)
      • They have put God in front of everything, like the child who believes it will be okay as long as they have their mother
      • Their eyes are on Jesus despite the storm
      • Nothing is larger in their eyes than their trust in God, not the diagnosis, not fear, not pain, not problems
        • Sounds like psalm 27:1-5
      • Not only can they rest in their faith and assurance, but God has given them what is good in their eyes (lines have fallen for me in pleasant places)
• At the end of the day, this text is an ongoing text, as long as you are living.  
  • Verse 6b describes the saints as having a beautiful inheritance, lets use verse 2 to talk about this beautiful inheritance how to get it

2 I say to the Lord, “you are my Lord; I have no good apart from you”

• Preach the gospel!