Pastor Tim shares a meditation on the Easter Hope we have from our Mighty Fortress, Jesus. We look at 1 Corinthians 15:20-21 and Ps. 46:8-11.
The following study questions and transcript are AI generated and may contain errors.
The following study questions and transcript are AI generated and may contain errors.
Good evening and welcome to Steadfast once again. It’s so good to have you here on this Easter Monday as we dig into God’s Word. We’re going to be digging into the second part of Psalm 46 tonight, and whether you were able to join us last week or not, I think we’re going to get a ton out of this passage because it gives us the exact kind of hope we need right now. So as we begin, let’s go ahead and open with prayer to our God. Let’s pray.
Father, thank you for your goodness. Thank you for sending your Son to die for us, but not just to die, but to triumph over death and offer eternal life to us. Lord, would you give us hope all the more tonight as we dig into your Word that we would see the promises that come from your love and your kindness, your steadfast love for us. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Well, I said we’re going to go into Psalm 46, but we’re actually going to stop over at 1 Corinthians chapter 15 first. You may have looked at this passage in a service yesterday for Easter. And we read these words from the Apostle Paul. If you think about these words for a moment, 1 Corinthians 15:20-21, they’re giving us a hint in the present that can give us confidence about what we’re going to read in Psalm 46.
Take a look with me at verse 20. It says, “But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of all those who have fallen asleep. For as by man came death, by man has come also the resurrection of the dead.”
If you think about these verses, we hear about the promise when we celebrate Easter of what Jesus has accomplished and what we’re going to experience someday for every person who trusts in him. Jesus is the firstfruits, the first taste of resurrection, of the defeat of death. And yet it doesn’t stop with Jesus. It starts with Jesus, and it’s so much more than simply coming back to life.
If you think about the life we’re in, many of us have plenty of reasons to be happy, and yet there’s also a lot of brokenness in this world. And this starts to pull back the veil. Seeing Jesus resurrected and then digging into God’s promise, it starts to pull back a veil that shows, wait, there’s much, much more. It’s not merely that we’re going to see God overcome death fully in the future. We’re going to see him as the true and complete triumphant King that he is. That’s what we find in Psalm 46 tonight.
If you look there with me, starting at verse 8, here’s what we read: “Come behold the works of the Lord, how he has brought desolations on the earth. He makes wars cease to the ends of the earth. He breaks the bow and shatters the spear. He burns the chariots with fire.”
“Be still and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations. I will be exalted in the earth. The Lord of hosts is with us, the God of Jacob. He is our fortress.”
These words contain promises that relate, in fact, to the promise of Easter. And yet, how often do we miss that even as we celebrate Easter? Even as we think about all the things we love about Easter, do we miss how it’s pushing us forward to cause us to pull back that veil and see the future?
I think maybe we’ve had to think about that a little bit more this year as we reflect on an Easter that was probably different than almost any of us have experienced in the past. I asked last night on Facebook what some of your favorite Easter traditions were, and there were all kinds of wonderful things, from wonderful beloved foods that are always fun to eat on Easter, to just family gatherings, to Easter egg hunts. My family always loved to have Easter egg fights where we’d see whose egg could break another person’s egg. You just can’t beat that. But all kinds of wonderful traditions.
And of course, one thing that came up over and over again is how much all of us look forward to Easter Sunday at church, whether it was dressing up in new clothes as little kids, or even just going in recent times and seeing the joy and the wonder as we celebrate the risen Lord. I always look forward to seeing all the wonderfully gifted musicians ready to play brass and strings and simply make it feel like that morning was alive just as Jesus is.
And yet yesterday, we didn’t quite have that. It was amazing. We got to watch so many people around the world streaming Easter services, and it was really neat how that worked. And yet it wasn’t the picture of those traditions that so many of us look forward to. The family gatherings that you shared, those weren’t necessarily the things we were experiencing either. It was different.
We could see the hope. We were still thinking about the hope that comes from Jesus’s resurrection. And yet we were also forced to look straight ahead at the brokenness that remains in the world.
But here’s the hope of Easter and every day. And that’s that hope will triumph over brokenness. That Jesus has already defeated it. And that while we’re still in the midst of this brokenness right now, this passage tells us of what is to come.
And first off with that is that Jesus is the King who triumphs completely. We see that in verse 9. Take a look there with me. It says, “He makes the wars cease to the ends of the earth. He breaks the bow and shatters the spear. He burns the chariots with fire.”
That’s not necessarily the imagery we normally think of on Easter, is it? But think about how wonderful it is.
If you were with me last week, we dug into the first part of Psalm 46. And in that we saw how the nations rage against our God. And in fact, we see that how much of the world seems to be constantly raging against God. How much in our own hearts seems to be raging against God. We see wars, and of course we see disease. We see natural disasters, even over this past weekend. We see all these things that seem to be raging against the goodness of God’s plan for us.
We see these things. And in this, we see a promise in 46, starting with verse 8, that God is going to defeat all those things. That everything that opposes Him, all the evil in the world, is not going to be where God’s going to say, “Would you pretty please go away? Would you end?” No, Jesus, the triumphant victor over death, will come; He’ll burn up the chariots, He’ll break the bows, the fired, deadly arrows, and He’ll shatter the spears.
It gives us a taste of a time in which war is a thing of the past. That truly, as it says at the beginning, wars cease to the ends of the earth. We have never known a time since Eden like this.
So when it talks about bringing desolations to the earth, this destruction, we normally think of that as a bad thing, but here it’s a good thing because God is going to destroy everything that in itself is destructive and destroys us. What wonderful news that is.
In that, we see a reminder that the things, as we talked about last week, those fortresses, those areas that we run to for protection themselves will give way for the destruction of the world. They themselves will give way, for they distract us from our God.
We talked last week about thinking, what are my fortresses, those things that I trust in that cause me to miss the truth of the gospel and the truth of where my true strength is—in God? And that’s the first step, to realize the weakness of everything we turn to that is not God.
Somehow, even though we know that, even though we’re often reminded of that, it seems like we just run from one weak thing as our refuge to another weak thing as our refuge. And I think part of that is because it’s really scary to think that all of them will fail.
And it’s scary when we read about desolations, destruction coming from a God who is taking military forces far greater than anything that we have; it’s scary. What if we end up on the wrong side? Suddenly it doesn’t seem like Easter joy; it seems like Easter fear.
And yet it need not be, because the goal here is simply to understand the limits of everything we’ve run to. They’re quite limited.
The second step is to realize who our God is because once we know who our God is, we can rejoice rather than fear. Because see, Jesus isn’t just the king who wins, who is victorious. Jesus is the king who never fails the people of his kingdom.
We’ve never known a king like that in any part of earthly history. The kings of the earth, the leaders of the earth, inevitably always fail. And we think, well, if I were that king, if I were that leader, I wouldn’t. If we know our own hearts, we know that we would too.
And in fact, in the areas that God gives us the ability to lead, to watch over things, what do we do? We fail too, just like everyone else.
But Jesus is the king who never fails his people, the people of his kingdom. And he invites us to be a part of that kingdom. And as we’re a part of that kingdom, there’s no need to fear, but rather to be still, as we’re told in verse 10.
Take a look there with me. “Be still and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations. I will be exalted in the earth.”
You see, what the psalmist is calling us to do, what God is calling us to do here, is not to fear, but to be still, to actually stop and see what is ahead. We sort of do that on Easter, but do we really? We’re so excited about everything going on, even at church, all the festivities. Do we really stop and think about that Easter hope in its fullness?
Maybe we do for a moment, but then we go back to regular life and start to miss it again. And we start to trust in those old refuges rather than stopping and truly thinking about who God is.
“Be still and know that I am God.” And when we do that, what do we see? We see two things according to the psalm that are crucially important.
First is that God will be exalted. And yes, God is already exalted. Yes, God is already the king of all the universe. And yet so often when we look in our own lives and as we look into this world, we look out there right now and we see a pandemic, we don’t think of God being exalted. We think of everything broken being exalted.
God reigns. And we’re told that there will be a time where that’s unmistakable, that every knee will bow, every knee will know who our Lord is. That’s why it’s so important that we turn to him now, that we trust in him as he offers his gospel to us, as he offers his love to us; that we wouldn’t focus on other things that seem more pressing in the moment. We wouldn’t focus on thinking that something else is really where we need to have our focus. And we certainly wouldn’t allow ourselves to think that we are unworthy, because it’s not about our worthiness. It’s about the God who is exalted now saying, come into my kingdom.
And you know what happens when we do? Well, we find that out in verse 11, is that our fortress will hold. Listen again to these words: “The Lord of hosts is with us. The God of Jacob is our fortress.”
How often do we stop and really think about that? I love using the Psalms as part of working through reading through the Bible, coming back to them on a regular basis. And how many times have I read this Psalm? And yet I know too often, I’m just reading through it. I’m not thinking about those words.
The God of Jacob is our fortress. I’m part of ours. You’re part of ours. Anyone who trusts in Jesus as a part of that hour is our fortress.
You see, when we turn to God’s word and we meditate on these promises, it’s a lot like taking a camera out and taking pictures. I love pulling out my camera and something happens. And if you’ve spent time taking pictures, really intentionally taking them, you probably noticed the same thing, which is as you do, you start to stop and look more closely.
Just the other week, last week, I believe, I started going around the yard and I took some pictures, and there were things that I knew were pretty. And yet just stop for a moment. You can see the beautiful flowering trees. So here’s a beautiful flowering shrub. And as I started to look around, as I started to look around, I also noticed some of the flowers that I virtually ignored. I overlooked this daffodil near the end of its little display. And yet it was still glorious and wonderful and beautiful.
Taking pictures, focusing on that little screen on my camera and what I could compose a picture of caused me to see things that otherwise in daily life I was too busy to see.
When we come to God’s word, it’s a camera for our lives. It causes us to focus on what’s true, what’s unchanging. It causes us to take all those things that pull us away from who Jesus is, that cause that truth to be lost in the noise of life. It says for a moment, just focus on these promises. Focus on the God who is our fortress rather than all the things that we normally trust in. And as we do that, more and more, it helps to allay our fears. And God uses that to equip us to do the things he’s prepared us to do.
If you haven’t started a Bible reading plan ever, or you haven’t in a while, now might be a really good time as we find ourselves sheltering at home to consider doing that. And it’s so much easier than ever before. You can download apps like the YouVersion app. I’d highly recommend it. It’s free. You download it and you can pick out a plan, different plans that might be helpful to you, different plans that might be of interest to you.
I really like the One Year Bible Plan, which gives you a little bit of each part of the Bible. It gives you Old Testament, New Testament, Psalms and Proverbs every single day. And the neat thing about being an app is that it will actually start with day one today if you start it today.
And you know what happens when we do that? It’s forcing us every day to pull out that camera and to focus not on all the problems in the world or all the false hopes, but to focus on God’s promises.
I know I struggle to do that. I think all of us struggle to do that because there’s so much going on in life.
And yet as we find ourselves here on this Easter week, that’s what we’re called to do: to focus on God’s promises.
So easy to get focused on other things. In fact, we’re going to start a new series. I’ll talk about that more in a moment where the disciples themselves seem to have missed that. Well, let’s not do that. Let’s turn every day to God’s promises.
Where are you with that today? Do you find that the Bible is something that you’re usually too busy to look at and you happen to watch this live stream tonight, maybe because it’s Easter week? That’s okay. Today’s a new day. You can start a new day and dig into God’s Word, knowing that God is the God who’s inviting you into his kingdom, perhaps for the very first time tonight.
Maybe you already know you’re a member of God’s kingdom and you’re still too busy. It happens to all of us. All of us get too busy to focus on God’s promises. Don’t we need more of this? Don’t we need more reminders that God is our fortress?
When we dwell in these promises and we hear what God is saying here, he said it for you and for me. He said it for all of his people, because what do we find throughout history? We always need to be reminded. He is our fortress, that we are safe in his promises.
And so it is that as we reflect on that passage from the very beginning, that passage promising that Jesus is the firstfruits of the resurrection, there’s so much more than simply coming back to life someday. That’s a wonderful thing. But imagine right now what he’s truly inviting us into when we trust in him. When we say it’s about who is already majestic and wonderful and not about ourselves.
We find that he’s inviting us to come into a kingdom, a kingdom that is steadfast because the king of that kingdom is steadfast. Jesus is the king who never fails the people of his kingdom. He never has. And you can trust him tonight. He never will.
Let’s pray.
Father, we thank you for your goodness. We thank you that you are the God who never fails. Lord, tonight, would you help us that we might trust in you all the more, knowing that you are the God who is with us through everything we face today, tomorrow, this week, this month, this year and forever. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.
As we think about what we missed on Easter, and maybe about to make some of you jealous, maybe you’re missing delicious Easter candy that you didn’t stock up on. I’m particularly partial to these Reese’s peanut butter eggs. They’re delicious, right? Well, what’s even more delicious is God’s kingdom that he invites us into.
We’re going to explore that more starting next week with this new series, Closed Doors. Because here’s the interesting thing: we’re not the only ones who have missed the promises of God’s kingdom. What do we find in the gospels right after the resurrection? We find disciples locked in a room, scared. They’re behind closed doors.
But Jesus wasn’t going to let that stop him from sending them out on a mission. It seems kind of appropriate, as many of us, for other reasons, are behind closed doors right now for good reasons. But nonetheless, it reminds us that wherever we are, God is with us, and he’s sending us out to do his work, whether it’s at the moment electronically and in the future, back into the normal, regular world that we’ve known in the past.
Whatever it is that we are specifically tasked to do, and God has a specific purpose for each of us, nothing is going to thwart his plans for us. And so we’re going to dig into that series next week, starting next week, 7 p.m., Monday night. I hope you’ll be there, and I hope you’ll think of someone else who could use that encouragement. I know it’s going to be a great time for us to share together.
Also, our men’s Bible study is back this week that we’re doing jointly with Bible Baptist and Faith Tree. And if you’re looking for a way to connect with believers and to dig into God’s promises more as we continue to shelter at home, and you’re thinking on this Easter week, I just really want to hear more about God’s word, well, I’d encourage you, please come and join us for Our Defender, Thursday night, 7 p.m. There’s a Facebook event you can take part in, and when you do that, you’ll get a link to our video conference. It’ll be a great time.
If you want to read ahead, we’re going into Isaiah 42 and 50 this week. I really hope you’ll join us there.
Well, for all this and more, we have more wonderful things planned. I hope that you’ll like us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram where we will keep you up to date. And in the meantime, before next week, something comes up and you need a prayer, please don’t hesitate in the least to contact me. I would love to pray for you. And if you give me permission, I’ll share it with some of the others helping to plant Little Hills Church. We’d all love to pray for you and surround you.
We may be apart physically, but we’re not apart as believers in Christ. And so please take advantage of that. Don’t feel alone this week.
Once again, we’ll be back next week at 7 p.m. for Closed Doors. I can’t wait to see you again then. Thank you for joining tonight. Have a wonderful and blessed Easter week.