The Father Who Protects

Our understanding of a father deeply shapes our identity and faith. In this series, we’ll explore how earthly fathers have impacted us, find healing for the places we’ve been hurt, and encounter God as the perfect Father who fully loves, restores, and defines who we are—so that His love overflows into the lives of others.

Transcript

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Thank you for listening to an audio resource from Stanwich Church, located in Greenwich in Stanford, Connecticut. The vision of Stanwich Church is to know Christ and make him known.

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The Old Testament lesson for today is Psalm 91, verses 1 through 16. This can be found on page 588 of your Pew Bible. This tender and intimate psalm describes the complete confidence we may have in the love and protection of our Heavenly Father. A reading of Psalm 91 beginning with the first verse. He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will abide in the shadow of the Almighty. I will say to the Lord, my refuge and my fortress, my God in whom I trust. For he will deliver you from the snare of the fowler and from the deadly pestilence. He will cover you with his pinions, and under his wings you will find refuge. His faithfulness is a shield and buckler. You will not fear the terror of the night, nor the arrow that flies by day, nor the pestilence that stalks in darkness, nor the destruction that wastes at noonday. A thousand may fall at your side, ten thousand at your right hand, but it will not come near you. You will only look with your eyes and see the recompense of the wicked. Because you have made the Lord your dwelling place, the Most High who is my refuge, no evil shall be allowed to befall you, no plague come near your tent. For he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways. On their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone. You will tread on the lion and the adder, the young lion and the serpent you will trample underfoot. Because he holds fast to me in love, I will deliver him. I will protect him because he knows my name. When he calls to me, I will answer him. I will be with him in trouble. I will rescue him and honor him. With long life I will satisfy him and show him my salvation. May God add his blessing to the reading of his holy word.

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When we were in Bamako, we arrived during a coup d'etat, and for the next couple years there were student riots, and we would listen to our neighbors about the best time to go anywhere in town. They kind of had knew the ground when these things were going to happen. And they told us today's a good day. I was doing an evangelism training on the other side of the river. There were two bridges you could go over, chose the right one that they said, and filled my car with all the evangelism stuff, uh, Ingrid and my three kids under the age of five. And we crested the bridge and a gang started coming at us. And they came from behind, and they had iron bars and they were hitting our car. And I was in this moment as a father, what do I do? I jumped out of the car and in Bombada, I said, Ne te France, neye américain, ananaka al Deme, which basically is, I'm not French, I'm American, I'm here to help you. Now I'd like to say that the spiritual giant me would have said, in Jesus' name, get away from here, but I went to practical wisdom. They were rioting because the French had devalued the Say Fa and other things were happening and long-term struggles. We were protected that day. I could tell you other stories of coming around a corner and machine guns were on us. Tell you other stories of coming around and bandits had uh spikes across the road, and I had to make quick decisions about what to do as a father with my kids in the car. And that just speaks of the times that I know God protected us. Who knows how many times his angels are in a place? But there's other stories from Molly. I have had friends who were evacuated because they were in a car accident. I had friends who've had guns put to their head and they were robbed. Even friends, wives who were violated. Only because people were angry at them as they were there as good news people. We're in our series, Encounter the Father's Heart. And we've tapped into the aspect that God is the one who declares our identity. If we know we're sons and daughters, that starts the whole process. Last week we saw through Pastor Heather that God gives us unconditional love. Pastor Gelani prayed that over us today. I hope you drank that in. That's God's provision that we don't work for anything. We're receivers. And today we get to the God who protects us. Now, in a congregation this size, we could give a lot of great testimonies where we could say God intervened and he protected. That would be a fun service in itself. But in a congregation this size, there are enough lost stories, not just distant ones, but some very close, that would cause us to ask, God, did you take that day off? And so we enter into the God who has a heart that protects us, but we've got to enter into the mystery of suffering and the struggle that we're at in this world. If you'll press into this text in the depth of it, you'll see that the Father's protection is not a promise of a trouble-free life, but it's a promise that he'll be with us everywhere we go. So let's go and allow the text to speak to us this morning. Psalm 91. There's basically three movements or three voices in this psalm. It begins with the psalmist himself in verses one and two. He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will abide in the shadow of the Almighty. I will say to the Lord, my refuge and my fortress, my God in whom I trust. Now, if you've been into hospital at some time during my ministry and I've read this over you, that means you're probably okay. If you're a little closer to deaths, I have other psalms that I read over you. So if you ever hear me come in and read this one, cheer up. Things are going well. And we like to know who the psalmist is because he speaks out of his life experience. He's giving testimony here. This is what I've experienced at the hand of God. In the Hebrew version of this, we don't know who it is. But in the Septuagint, which was the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures, which was made before Jesus walked on this earth, they put it's a psalm from David. And then the Targum, if you're following all this, that's the commentary. This isn't scripture, but it's commentary. They say it was David giving instructions to Solomon. Now that helps me get into this because David knew trouble. And so I won't read this too quickly and miss the point that David's making in giving instruction to his son. It begins with positioning ourselves in relationship to God. He who dwells and she who abides. This is not a casual relationship. This isn't check God off the box on Sunday and get on with the rest of my life. This is a daily pursuing him and acknowledging that he is the creator, he is the redeemer. And if he ever turned his gaze away from me, I'd be in serious trouble. And so it acknowledges who God is. See, when you abide and you dwell, you come to some of these conclusions. The Lord is my refuge. He's my fortress, my God, in whom I trust. So this is the psalmist after multiple years of seeing God come diving in and incredible intervention, and maybe other times not doing what he had expected. Are you with me on that? It moves to the second part of the psalm, which is David speaking to Solomon, and I would say, because this is holy writ, David is speaking to us today through the power of the Holy Spirit. And he gives a little sermonette which really simply reminds us of the situation, there's danger. We live in a dangerous world. He uses phrases like this: the snare of the fowler, deadly pests, the terror of night, the arrow that flies by day. In case we missed it the first time, pestilence that stalks in the darkness, destruction that wastes away at noonday, people falling by your side. There's all of this danger in our world. Now, I wish I had about an hour to step back, but there's a desire in us to kind of explain where this danger is, and somehow there's a camp that puts it in God. Danger is a result that we fell and we brought destruction into this world. When people tell me I have a hard time in believing in a God who allows people to suffer, you're missing the point. God is the one who brings blessing. God is the one who brings restoration. We have an enemy of our soul and a kingdom of darkness that's battling against us. That's why we spend six weeks exploring the kingdom of God because we're in the restoration project of cooperating with God to overturn the darkness to bring his light in this world. And the psalmist wants Solomon to know it's not going to be an easy life. There's going to be challenges. We live with a lie sometimes that if you come to Jesus, it'll all go well for you. Come to Jesus and it's going to get messed up. Because you'll have other things that are driving you than simply pleasure. The desire for the glory of God and other things will take over in your life. And you'll live at a different level. In this announcing danger, he gives all of these protection statements. Destruction will not touch you. Others will fall by the side. He'll even command his angels concerning you. Great promises that remind us that God is looking on at every situation. And he brings his son back to the key element, I believe, of this passage in verse 9, he says this because you have made the Lord your dwelling place. God's not dependent on our obedience and our response to do what he's going to do, but we will be more confident in God's response when he does something we weren't expecting him to do. When we're dwelling and abiding in the presence of the Lord. But what do you do in situations when it feels like God's not? I mean, he holds fast to me in love, but there have been times where he has not delivered me. I got hit by a car going 50 miles an hour. I used to say God T-boned me with a car, but uh that's not the right picture because it makes evil part of God. But God allowed that because he was doing something bigger in my life. Um, some of the stories that I told you about those who didn't get what they were wanting, God allowed it in a mysterious way, not that we can't get our minds around, but he's not the source of that. Uh, there are times when people do not hear the answer. There are times when they don't feel protected. There's times when it feels like he doesn't rescue, and not everybody gets long life. So we need to speak about the elephant in the room when we come to a psalm like this. What's going on? I'll come back to my big idea for this sermon. When we talk about the heart of our Father who protects us, it doesn't mean that we're going to have a trouble-free life. The promise is found that he said he would be there with us right in the midst of it. And I think it's actually embedded in the psalm itself. Max, throw show the psalm up there. I will deliver, I will protect, I will answer. That all sounds positive, right? At the end, I will rescue, I will honor, I will satisfy, I will show my salvation. But in the middle, he says, I will be with him in trouble. What it means is that God's greatest promise to us is in the struggle, is that he will not abandon us. Not that necessarily he's going to get us out of that trouble. Bless the Lord when he gets us out of trouble. But there are times that are mysterious to us that we can't get our mind around. In fact, we could use this psalm in illegitimate ways, and we should know that because when Jesus is tempted by Satan, do you remember what Satan did? First of all, he challenged his identity. We talked about how the Father gives us his identity. He says, if you are the Son of God, and then he quotes this psalm to him and says, He will not let your foot be dashed. Just jump off of this temple space. He's going at the very core heart of God that God knows how to protect us and to be present to us at the right time. But let's speak about the hard aspect, the testimonies of loss. This morning, as I'm preaching this, I'm looking around the room and I'm thinking, there's so much loss in a community like this. What do you do with the fact that it feels at times like God is not protecting? And so I went to a friend this week who's lost a lot more than I have. I said, help me preach this passage. I don't want to be trite about it. Um, I've experienced loss in my life, but not like you. How did you process psalms like this in your extreme loss? And the first thing he said to me is, the question for me is, how do you find define protection? If protection means that no harm will come to you, he goes, I don't get it, I don't buy it, and it hasn't been my experience. We live in a broken world. There are cancer cells, there are drunk drivers, there are situations that come our way that have no logic in them. And if we try to reason them out, we will be lost all the time. We're in a broken world. Uh the second thing he said to me, which is very interesting, to be honest with you, I still struggle asking for prayer, for protection. I mean, that's a great admission. When you've been disappointed, it's natural that you would say, I struggle asking for prayer. He said, I'm in a period of restoration right now. There's been a lot of loss in my life, but right now God is giving back to me in unique ways, but I'm still waiting for the other foot to drop, the other shoe to drop. He said, Last week alone I prayed right before communion, Lord, please, no more, don't take anything or anyone else away from me. See, that's real spirituality. That's being before God. See, the human reflex in us is we want to explain the why. And the truth of the matter, even though Kushner wrote the book, Why Bad Things Happen to Good People, the Bible never answers the question why. It always answers the question how. And there are elements of spiritual warfare in this passage that I don't have the time to get into, but arrows that fly, it's the fiery darts of the enemy, and the enemy who keeps trying to say, your father is not loving, and he will not protect you. And he's not present to you. The other assignment is to over-emphasize naturalism, a kind of a deism that God is the watchmaker and he started this earth and now he's just not intervening. The problem with that, there's too many times when God does intervene. And even while we were talking, my friend gave testimony to this. He said, God keeps showing up. I haven't lost God, and God hasn't lost me because he keeps showing himself to me in different ways. He talked about a wilderness experience that he went on to try to process his anger. I don't know if any of you have ever done that. He wanted to be out someplace where he could throw rocks and pieces of wood and yell at God. Sometimes that's good for the soul. That's what some of the psalms do. And while he was out in the experience, he heard God say to his heart, I'm not your enemy. I'm your ally. I'm going to redeem your pain. Will you join me in the restoration? So I can't explain why things come to certain people and others, and why some people get an overstatement of suffering. But what I know is I'd rather have God in the suffering than not have God in the suffering. And so there's two responses to this psalm for us when we deal with the dark side of not being protected, at least as we see it in our minds. The first one is an individual one, and it's found in the words of the psalm itself. He who dwells. Walter Brugeman talks about three movements in the Psalms: orientation, disorientation, and reorientation. When you're in seasons of orientation and reorientation, that's the time to press into the Father's heart. Because in gaining a sense of that relationship, you'll know that your sonship, your daughtership, and his love for you is not determined on your circumstances. And the promise that he will be with you all the time will come alive to you in ways that surprise you. Here's the reality God is often more glorified in the way I honor him in suffering than when I get to do a sign or a wonder in his name. Why? Because we're always trying to get God off the hook. And as Peter Kreef said, God never gets himself off the hook for suffering, he puts himself on the hook. That's the cross. And we sang it earlier today. Day that resurrection tells us that in the end, God always wins. Even death gets swallowed up in victory. But I gain that understanding by pressing into the heart of the Father in times, like the Proverbs writer says, the name of the Lord is a strong tower, the righteous run into it and they're safe. And so in times of orientation and reorientation and restoration, run to the Father. Get to know him. When times of disorientation come, you're going to need to count on that banked currency of relationship with the Lord. We had friends from Lebanon, Denise and Rodwan Dagger. Rodwan was one of my students at Alliance Theological Seminary. Even though he was a student, he was more like a brother. We were the same age. We had similar experiences from West Africa. I was so excited to train him up. He was going back to be the director of the Bible school in Beirut. Finished their studies, went back to Beirut, and I think within three months he contracted cerebral meningitis and he died. Total waste in the economy of how we see things. I said, How are you doing with the father right now? And she said, Well, I can crawl up into his lap, but I still can't look him in the face. See, in times of disorientation, you're still going to press into the father if you've had time with him in the past. And he's going to still seem real to you. The community response is found in her words as well when she said, It was my friends who carried me along. When I spoke with my friend this past week, who's been through a lot, he said, the times that God's protection seemed real to me is when people came around me. It was the upcoming birthday of his son, who died in an accident going back to university. And a group of friends made a commitment to do a prayer vigil for him, 24 friends an hour each. And when they told him they was going to do this, he said, You go ahead and do it. I don't think it's going to change anything for me. Then he gave this testimony as we talked. He said, You know, I felt uniquely protected that day. That somehow God was with me. You see, what happens when there's loss in the community, we're so used to pushing it aside because we're afraid if we talk about it, it's going to make that person sad. As if they've forgotten that there's loss. It's bringing it up that gives them the freedom to know that people still see them in their pain. And I'm not talking about Job's friends type of work. They tried to explain the why. And it's not throwing a Romans 8.28 on someone. All things work together for good for those who love the Lord. That's something you discover in your own pain. That's not for me to launch on someone else in the midst of their pain. Being a community that embraces others' loss means that we celebrate what the Father does. I will be with you in your pain. When I come to this moment, I'm not sure which story to tell. I look at some of you and I remember moments where we cried and we experienced the loss together. But there was one that is so heavy on my mind right now because they were in the service at nine o'clock. About seven years ago, Bart Bergman's father, uh brother, Judson, was driving in California on business. He was actually in a taxi, and a drunk driver went the wrong way on the throughway, and they had a head-on crash, and he and his wife were killed instantly. I was gone from Stanwich at that time, but we had such a rich relationship. I felt like I needed to reach out to them. Because of our travels and him trying to get to Chicago to care for family things, we couldn't get together. And so I just prayed on the phone, not expecting to be able to get a close connection. Ingrid and I were flying to Vancouver through Chicago. And when we landed in Chicago, I sent a text message to Beth and I said, just landed in Chicago. I know that Bart's gonna be here some days. Just want you to know we're praying for you. And she responded, You're not gonna believe this, but I'm in the parking lot. I'm picking Bart up. And she said, He's been delayed on the tarmac, they can't get a gate for him. Ingrid and I only had about 25 minutes between flights, but I started texting with Bart, and somewhere between the D concourse and the C concourse, we met. And we were able to sit there and pray. It didn't take the pain away, but it was presence. There's a mystery in all of this. How does God do that to show his presence to someone and not just move that taxi out of the way so it doesn't have a head on? It brings us to the mystery of our faith. And it brings us back to the declaration of the psalmist. I either can have God in my suffering or be alone in my suffering. And as the psalmist, I declare for us, Lord, we trust in you. Amen.

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