God is Powerfully Present

Introduction

Thanks, Frank. Hi, my name’s Daniel. I’m on the leadership team here. Let me tell you a story about my father. I was quite young, and so my memory of the story may not be 100% accurate. Dad, if you’re listening, don’t spoil it; I like it the way it is. This is my memory. When I was quite young, one of the places we grew up, for a while, we lived in an Aboriginal community up in Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory called Yirrkala.

I remember this scene there where we were playing in the yard. I was somewhere in the middle of primary school age, playing in the yard, and a guy came into our yard screaming and yelling. The dog went mad, and he had in his hand a bundle of fishing spears. He took a fishing spear and broke it over the back of our dog, screaming and yelling, “Your dog bit my child!” My mum very quickly, you can imagine, rushed us into the house, and then she called Dad.

This is my memory. I remember looking out the front window. We lived on a corner block. It was a dirt road, from my memory, and I remember seeing Dad’s car coming down the road, like there’s a cloud of dust as Dad’s car comes down the road, as he hits that corner and puts the car sideways around the corner, sliding into our driveway, jumps out, and I hear his voice raised as he comes and addresses this guy. In my brain, I’m thinking, “Man, that is so cool, what a boss!” I’m also thinking, “That’s it, all is well, all is safe, Dad is here now.”

As an adult, and I reflect back on that story, however accurate it is, there’s other things going on in my head. There’s this new kind of adult point of view where I go, “That’s probably not quite how things were playing out in my dad’s mind.” There’s adrenaline pumping, unsure what he’s going to find. From my memory, the conversation went along the lines of, “Your dog bit my child.” He said, “Show me the child.” The guy didn’t show him a child, and in the end, he said, “Unless you can show me, we’re going to leave it at that,” and it kind of settled and ended. That’s my memory of it.

But as an adult, we realize these things aren’t quite as clean-cut as that. There’s a moment where you think there’s some security in a moment like that. You feel the security, but in reality, the truth is there are no guarantees that all was going to be safe. As we think about life, we see that there are lots of moments that we wish we could be more sure, but the reality is we recognize that we are massively limited in so many situations. There is no guarantee that we will be enough.

As we think about Father’s Day, this is my thought for my children: I wish I could guarantee that I will always be enough for them. I wish I could guarantee that my presence would always mean their safety, but the truth is that’s not true. It’s not just true as a father, but we think that as a spouse, we want to be enough for our spouse. We think that in our friendships, and we think that even as individuals. I remember in my early days as a young adult, I used to keep next to my bed a machete. You’ve got to have some sort of security, so I kept a machete. It was only about a foot and a half long.

I remember hearing a noise in the night one night and getting up and picking up my machete, and it suddenly crossed my mind, “If there was someone in the house, what am I going to do with this machete?” Because the reality is I don’t want to use the machete. There are very few options except for either look really scary—that’s a good option, I like that option—probably in my pajamas holding a machete. I don’t know, it’s a scary look for different reasons. But the truth is the only other option is swing it, and that’s not an option you want. You realize your limitations, even the limitations even to be enough to protect myself.

The reality is we are not enough. We have massive limitations, and it’s quite overwhelming when we find those moments of limitation. Those are moments that bring great trouble to us when we realize I may not be able to do what I would like to do, what I want to do, what I feel like I need to do in this moment. There is a picture we get in this psalm that we just read, and we’re going to spend a bit of time unpacking it. A picture where we see God’s people who recognize their limitations, but here’s the message of the psalm. It’s an incredibly beautiful song. The message is God is enough, God is powerful, and God is present. God is strong, and He is here, and He is enough.

As we think about our limitations and we come across the troubles that we face, we have a psalm here, a song for God’s people that reminds us He is powerful and He is present. So I want to spend a bit of time unpacking that with you. The first thing I want to do, this is a song, and we see this as God’s word, and there’s truth in God’s word, and we want to dig in God’s truth to discover what it means for us. Because there’s a song, I want to show you the structure of the song. I’ve broken the song into two columns, two halves, and in each half, I want to pick up two themes. There’s a theme of power, and there’s a theme of presence.

The Need for a Powerfully Present God

God is Our Strength and Refuge

This is what we read. The first one is the subject line of the song: God is our strength and refuge. We get this first picture of power. We’ll unpack that in a second. We actually get a second hint of presence there. He’s our ever-present help in trouble. That’s the theme of the song. We get the second stanza that starts in verse four, this picture of God’s presence. There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God. The city of God is the place that God dwells. It’s His presence. Then we get this refrain in the song, verse 7: The Lord Almighty is with us. That’s His presence. The God of Jacob is our fortress. That’s His power.

There’s a shift in the song, but we get in the second half, we get another picture of power. Come and see what the Lord has done, the desolation He has caused. He makes wars to cease, it says. It’s a picture of power. Then we get this incredible picture of presence, the famous verse of this psalm. He says, “Be still and know that I am God.” Then the song finishes with that refrain again: The Lord Almighty is with us. That’s His presence. The God of Jacob is our fortress. He is powerful. That is the picture we get of this psalm, and it’s important for the psalmist, the songwriter, to think about these themes because one of the key things he wants to get through at the start is there is a need for a powerfully present God.

The Power of Trouble

There’s a need for a powerfully present God because there is trouble that we face. In fact, the first picture of power we get in this psalm is actually a picture of the power of the trouble. We’re told we will not fear, but why should we not fear in the face of, and he lists these powerful things. He lists the power of nature, and in this power of nation, verse 2, the earth gives way, and the mountains fall. Verse 3, the waters roar, and the mountains quake. The first picture we get of power is the power of the nations of nature, and it’s an incredibly powerful picture because it’s something that we really recognize our limitation to. When we come face to face to the power of nature.

Another place that I grew up in, Papua New Guinea, we had a river next to our school called Bumble River, and it flooded regularly. There was a whole lot of houses on the edge of the river. It flooded every year. There was a whole lot of houses on the edge of the river, and every year it flooded, it eroded away the bank of the river and got wider and wider, and the houses got more and more at risk. I remember standing on the river early years in high school watching an entire house fall into the river. There was just nothing that could stop it. There’s nothing those homeowners could do to prevent as the ground carved out underneath their house, a double-story building just collapsing, and the water just taking it away. Such a vivid memory as a high schooler standing on my school grounds looking out at this river next to our school and watching a house just wiped away. That is the power of nature.

In fact, I was looking it up this week. It’s been many years since I’ve been there, and I was actually trying to make sure that it actually was next to the school because that was my memory, and I saw a news article in 2017 that someone was moving for the government and petitioning for the government to build some walls to stop the erosion because of the massive real estate loss that is happening because of that. They have put walls there, but I can already see in the photos today that the water is cut in behind some of these walls and continued to erode away the banks of the river. There is power in nature, and it’s an overwhelming, unstoppable force, and the picture we get for God is that we do not need to fear in the face of that power. So while the emphasis is on the trouble, not on God, the point is that God is powerful. He’s powerful in the face of nature, and He’s powerful in the face of nations.

God is Powerful in the Face of Nations

We get it in the second stanza. In the first stanza, we see that waters roar and mountains fall, and in the second stanza, we get the picture that nations are in uproar and kingdoms fall. It’s a similar imagery that the songwriter writes poetically for what’s happening in nature is something that we see in people as well, and the message is clear: God is powerful in the face of these things. Why do we need a powerfully present God? Because trouble is real. That is a message throughout the Bible. It is a danger sometimes when we think about, “Well, if we’re with God, if we’re on His side, if we’re His people, we should be free from trouble,” but the truth is the Bible never says that is true. The Bible always says that trouble is around in this world, that there is brokenness in this world, and we will face trouble. In fact, not only is it possible for God’s people to be in trouble, it is the norm throughout the Bible that God’s people are in trouble. We need a powerfully present God because there is trouble, but God is powerful, and He is present.

God’s Presence: Providence and Peace

God is the Provider

The idea of being present is quite a pop word in parenting, the idea of being present in the moment and not just being there. We certainly talk about the idea of devices distracting parents from being present in the moment. You can be in the park, and you can scroll with one hand and push the swing with the other. It works. It’s good. I like it. It’s a good way to unwind until you push too hard or you push them off the swing. But there is a push for us to say we shouldn’t be doing that. There’s something about being present in the moment with our kids that that’s a beautiful thing, that it’s not good enough to say, “I provided my children with a good life,” but actually, we want to provide them with a good relationship with us in that life. That is the picture we get of God in this. He is a present God. This is what we read in verse four: There are rivers, there is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy place where the most high dwells. What a beautiful picture that is of God’s presence.

The first picture that is of God’s presence is a picture of providence, that God is the provider. We have this scene of this war raging outside the city walls, and God’s people are in the city with God. He is present with them, and there is a provision in this picture of a river. In ancient wartime, one of the common strategies to defeat a city was to cut off their supplies and stop any suppliers getting in and out of the city. But if a city had access to a large, strong-flowing river, that was quite a hard thing to do because you could, it’s very difficult to stop the water flow from going into the city. If in that water there are things like fish, then there are food supplies going into the city as well. So there’s a picture of God’s providing for His people in this city.

God is Peace

It’s not just a picture of providence, it’s also a picture of peace. This is the way the psalmist, the songwriter, writes this song. There is this raging war outside. The mountains are falling, the seas are roaring, and then we hit this verse, and it’s a complete shift in the picture. It’s a shift. It sounds more like Psalm 23: He leads me beside still waters. There’s a peace that comes here. In Psalm, there’s trouble at both the front and the back. As we read this verse, before the verse, we see the mountains falling and the seas raging, and after the verse, we see the nations rising and the kingdom’s falling. There’s this battle going on front and back, but there’s this picture of peace.

I was trying to think of how to portray this picture, and it reminded me of a TikTok filter that I’ve seen recently. It’s not quite like wars raging, but I don’t know if you’ve seen this one. You can put it on your phone, and you can film a scene, and then up in the background in the sky, you can have the war is raging while 8 AM is having their morning tea there. That’s the picture we get. This crazy thing is going on outside. Mountains are falling, seas are roaring, but God’s people are with Him at peace. This is a message for the people of God. This is a message for people who are in Christ, united with Him, that even in the worst trouble, and the message is that trouble isn’t taken away at this point. The message isn’t that it’s gone. It’s there, but the message there’s amidst that trouble, there is a peace in His presence.

The truth is it is impossible for us to comprehend why God allows suffering if we haven’t been able to grasp hold of His ultimate goodness because it is understanding God’s ultimate goodness in Him and through the gift of Jesus that allows us to be united in Him that we can start to make sense of suffering because it is in those moments that God says that He wants us to know Him and grow in Him. It can be in difficult times. It’s in our limitations that we are reminded that He is unlimited. It is in our failings that we are reminded He never fails. There is a peace in His presence, and it’s a real power. This is not God hiding away behind huge walls, powerless to stop it, but there is a real power there we experience in our life.

God’s Real Power

I think often there is certain power and authority that we each have in our life over our life, and God gives us opportunities there, but there is also a kind of fake power that happens at times where we try to assert our power in ways that isn’t real power. I remember an experience I had a number of years ago. I was driving down a road, and I saw a woman and a man having an argument down the road, and she ran off from him, and he pushed her into the bushes and went in after her. In that moment, there’s a lot of things you’re thinking, “What do I do?” There’s certain responsibility I feel, and so learning well from my father, I dropped my four-wheel drive down a gear, and I mounted that center curb. I was driving my Toyota Hilux, which had a Commodore V6 engine in it with a Nissan Patrol gearbox, and I pulled over, and I mounted the curb next to him, and I drove right up till my bullbar pushed into the bushes, and then I wound down my window a crack, and I said, “Hey, what’s happening?” That was false power. In fact, I was completely terrified in that moment.

The woman got up, and she ran down the road. The man explained to me that that was his fiancee, and they were having a disagreement. I let that conversation go on long enough for her to get down to the train station, and once I saw she turned into the train station, I thanked him for his time, and I drove off, and I called the police. There’s a false power there. I deliberately did everything I could to puff myself up and look as powerful as I could. That’s not what we see happening here. There is a real power for God. Listen to this real power, verse 6: He lifts His voice, the earth melts. I feel like I can’t think of anything that would describe more power than that. He lifts His voice, and the earth melts.

At my house, sometimes we have played floor is lava with the kids, and you’ve got to stay off the floor and stay on the lounges, and they asked at one point, “Why do we have to stay off the lava? Is lava bad?” I said, “Lava is hot.” They’re like, “How hot is lava?” I remember saying to Jett, “Lava is a melted rock,” and the kids go, “You can’t melt rock.” “No, you can melt rock. Lava is melted rock.” It is actually quite a hard thing to process. That’s crazy what’s happening there. Recently, I saw some videos of a guy that flew his drone over some volcano to get some footage, fantastic footage, but he holds up his drone with its melted wings, and he says, “Worth it.” Lava is hot, and it melts rock. It is melted rock, and here’s the picture we get of God’s power: He lifts His voice, and the earth melts. There is power in His presence, and we need a God who is powerfully present because there is trouble, and the promise is that He is present and He is powerful.

God’s Glory is the Best Thing

God’s Power Over the Nations

In the second half of the song, there’s a shift in language where we get this talking about this scene in a city. The songwriter invites us to a new scene. I’m going to run through this bit fairly quickly, but this is the picture of power we get in the second half, verse 8. He says, “Come and see what the Lord has done, the desolations He has brought on the earth.” Now, it’s possible to think that this songwriter is describing a battle scene in Israel at the time, except we get to the next bit where it says, “He makes wars cease to the ends of the earth.” There is a picture far greater than something Israel experienced here. This is the ending of all wars. He breaks the bow and shatters the spear. He burns the shields with fire. Here, God’s power is not in contrast to nature and the nations. Here, God’s power is over the nations. This is calling people to account for what the damage they’ve brought on the earth. This is God’s power at work. It’s a shift in language there, but it’s also a shift in language as we think about the presence of God.

Be Still and Know That I Am God

We meet that famous verse, verse 10. He says, “Be still and know that I am God.” This is the scene, the apex of the song, because the psalmist has spent time describing this crazy scene, this raging war, this earth being shaken, and then he comes to this place of silence. There’s a strategy that people use in movies to portray silence. When you’re watching a movie, you hear silence, and you can hear the silence. Silence is nothing, but one of the things they do in movies to really give you that impression of silence is to make as much noise as possible up to that moment. They are doing everything to just pump volume at you so that when they suck that volume out, you feel a vacuum in the room. That’s what’s happening here. We’re getting this huge pushing from the songwriter of the huge violence and noise that is happening. God has brought desolation on the earth. He makes wars cease to the ends of the earth. He’s breaking bows and shattering the spear. He burns the earth with fire, and then we get this vacuum that happens. It’s like this, and the message is be present in God’s presence to those who fear trouble, know His power, and to those who make trouble, know His power. He says, “Be still and know that I am God.” That is not just a message to God’s people, but it’s to those that the judgment is coming on as well. Be still and know that I am God.

When I think of those scenes in a movie where we get that vacuum of silence, the thing you expect afterwards is this huge explosion that pulls everything sucks in. There’s that moment where you sit in this silence, and then there’s this rippling explosion that fires out and shakes the room, and the subwoofer rolls, and the chair quakes. That’s what we expected that moment. That’s not what we have here. What happens in this moment is a mighty explosion of a cheer that rings out, the roar of a crowd. This is what it says. God says, “I will be exalted among the nations. I will be exalted to the ends of, I’ll be exalted in the earth.” I think this is a key to understanding this psalm. The key is God’s glory is the best thing for God’s people because when we think about our limitations, the struggle is that we ultimately want to see an end to our limitations in a way that brings us glory, and if there’s no guarantee that that’s going to happen, then there’s no hope. There’s no guaranteed hope in that struggle.

Pointing People to God

I remember a situation recently. I don’t actually remember the specific situation. I was nervous about something, and I was quite worked up about something I had to do that I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to do well, and Susie said to me, she said, “Don’t worry, God’s got this.” I process that and go, “That’s a great thing to remind me, and it’s true.” My struggle is I don’t know that God’s got this in the way I want God to have got this. When I’m facing something where I’m nervous that my reputation’s on the line, I need to perform in a certain way, I need to achieve certain things, I don’t know that God is going to work things in a way that will glorify me, and the truth that needs to be wrestled in that moment is God’s glory is the best thing for God’s people, not my glory, which means I need to wrestle in my limitation that even though I might fail, God’s glory is the greatest thing.

As we think about our limitations with others in our life, that same thing is true. As I think about my limitation that there’s no guarantee that I can be there and be everything my children need all the time ever, as I wrestle with that, I need to remember actually the greatest thing for them is to look to God’s glory, not mine. When I’m pointing them to God’s glory, the hope is that when I fail, which inevitably we do, let people down, when I fail, that they are pointing to God, and my failure actually is a way of lifting God’s faithfulness and the fact that He never fails to them. When I meet those moments where I am not able to do things the way I would like them to do, I need my spirit to be reminded that God is, He never fails. In the moments that I succeed, and we do the things that we wanted to do, and we achieve the things that we want to do, we need to in those moments be thankful to God for everything He’s given us and the opportunity He’s given us and the way He’s made us to do and achieve things.

When we meet times of trouble, we want to remember that those are the things that grow us closer to God. When we remember that God’s glory is the best thing for God’s people, that points our hearts to God, and we should have a desire to point others to that truth as well, pointing people to God because there is power in His presence, and we need that powerful presence because trouble is there, but the promise is not in this life freedom from that trouble, but peace and providence in Him in that trouble. As we remember God’s glory is the best thing for God’s people, let me pray. Lord God, we thank you that you are mighty and powerful. Lord, we pray that we would rest in that truth in you, that your glory is the best thing for your people, and that we will have hearts pointed to you, that in failure, we are reminded that you never fail, in success, we are reminded that you have given us so many opportunities, in trouble, we turn to you, and we point others to you in your name. Amen.