Ps 46:1-2 tells us ‘God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear.’ When we fear, it’s because we’ve lost sight of who God is. He is our fortress. (Ps 46:7, 11) He is mighty. (Zeph 3:17) He is strong. (Ps 62:2, 11)

Martin Luther wrote a hymn based on this psalm entitled ‘Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott’ (‘A Mighty Fortress Is Our God‘). It’s a hymn which proclaims who God is among the trials and darknesses of life. Our power may not be able to accomplish anything (as verse 2 says), but the ‘right Man’ fights for us, Jesus Christ, the Lord of hosts. The prince of this world ultimately cannot touch us (verse 3), because He is judged: ‘ein Wörtlein kann ihn fällen’, ‘one little word can fell him’!

There is defiance in this hymn, the kind of holy defiance which refuses to bow down to the devil and be cowed by him. This kind of defiance is seen in many of Rend Collective’s anthems:

‘Let our praises remind all the darkness

Of how great and how mighty our God is,

For the battle belongs to the Lord, and no one else.

We are standing in holy defiance;

We’re declaring aloud in the silence

That the battle belongs to the Lord and no one else, no one else.’ (‘Marching On’, Rend Collective)

“Defiant against the darkness

I will declare Your goodness

In the highs, in the lows,

In the winter of my soul.

Defiant until the breakthrough,

Trusting the mountain will move,

In the highs, in the lows,

You will never let me go.’ (‘Defiant’, Rend Collective)

‘We will not bow down to sin or to shame.

We are defiant in Your name.’ (‘More Than Conquerors’, Rend Collective)

Gareth Gilkeson comments that there is a difference between denial and defiance. ‘Denial is pretending everything’s fine, and we’re being false. God doesn’t want us to be false with Him. He wants us to be real.’ But when we stand on God’s word when life is tough and choose to believe Him rather than our physical eyes, when we declare over despair that God is our hope, we enter into a holy defiance which can change not only us but the circumstances we face.

Fear has to flee when God is present. When we see God as He is – that mighty fortress, that all-conquering hero, the Alpah and Omega who has triumphed over death and the grave – we are set free from fear and can find joy in the unlikeliest of places.

Many people feel the need for protection, and nowhere do we see this more plainly than in our homes. There is a saying, ‘An Englishman’s home is his castle’, and castles were not only seen as magnificent abodes fit for royalty, they were seen as impregnable fortresses, able to withstand the battering rams of the enemy. A castle had fortified towers; any who hid within were safe and secure. This imagery was often used to describe God as a mighty fortress, a tower of refuge (Ps 46:7, 11; Prov 18:10).

In our modern homes, our security devices look very different: five lever mortice deadlocks, bolts, fences, gates, burglar alarms, CCTV cameras. But their purpose is the same: to keep enemies at bay and to keep us safe.

Life is, undoubtedly, hazardous. Risks abound, and we like to retreat to our homes to feel safe from the storms of life. We ‘hunker down‘; we pull up the drawbridge, so to speak, and retreat to safety.

Yet the home is probably one of the most hazardous places there is! RoSPA tell us ‘nearly half of fatal accidents takes place in the home, with millions more people ending up in A&E after being seriously hurt in their house, garden or driveway.’ Fires (whether caused by smoking, cooking, drying clothes over or near the fire or electrical faults, for example), tripping and falling, garden accidents and so on account for many a trip to hospital.

Even worse, for some people, the relationships in the home can lead to emotional or physical harm; during lockdown, it has been reported that the strain of living in such close proximity has to led to a 49% increase in calls to a national domestic abuse helpline. (Source: BBC News)

How, then, can we ensure our safety without becoming paranoid? Risk will always be a fact of life: how can we live in security and peace when faced with so many ‘dangers, toils and snares’, as John Newton put it?

The Bible offers us the double security of being hidden with Christ in God. (Col 3:3)

Jesus made it plain that the life of a disciple will have troubles, but also said, ‘I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish, no one will snatch them out of my hand.’ (John 10:28) He went on, ‘My Father, who has given them to me, is greather than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father’s hand.’ (John 10:29)

The Christian life is not flimsy, fragile or frail. It is robust, able to withstand every storm of life (including pandemics!) We have the double security of being in Christ and in the Father. That’s better than even the best security system!

Roadworks at Cathill Roundabout along the A635/ A6195 started in February 2020 and are scheduled to last ten months at least. These road improvements were designed to increase the size of this roundabout (along with the Broomhill Roundabout and Wath Road Roundabout) as part of the Dearne Valley Economic Growth Corridor schemes, aiming to reduce existing traffic congestion along these roads and to ensure the road network has the capacity to accommodate any future traffic growth that could arise from the development of BMBC’s local plan allocated employment site ES10 situated off the A635 at Goldthorpe.

Each day as we travel along this route, we see diggers and workmen industriously widening the roads and roundabout. It’s clearly a huge project, made all the more difficult by the need to keep the roads open as much as possible while work is ongoing.

Isaiah 40:4 takes the imagery of major road construction, saying, ‘every valley shall be raised up, every mountain and hill made low; the rough ground will become level, the rugged places a plain.’

Ellicott says, ‘the figure of speech is drawn from the titanic engineering operations of the kingly road-makers of the east, where impassable valleys were to be filled up so as to make a level road on which a king and his armies could travel.’ All obstructions were to be removed so that the monarch at the head of an army could proceed.

This passage comes in the context of Isaiah’s prophecy of a messenger sent to ‘prepare the way for the Lord’ (Is 40:3), which the New Testament interprets as applying to John the Baptist’s ministry (Matt 3:1-12). Figuratively, we see something of the revolutionary, paradoxical and topsy-turvy nature of God’s kingdom in the idea that valleys shall be raised up and mountains and hill made low. In this kingdom, the meek are exalted and the proud are brought low (Matt 23:12); wrong ways are set right and rough natures smoothed. God does not work in predictable or expected ways, for His foolishness is wiser than our wisdom and His weakness stronger than our strength. (1 Cor 1:18-25)

Of this verse, Matthew Henry wrote, ‘may the Lord prepare our hearts by the teaching of His word and the convictions of His Spirit, that high and proud thoughts may be brought down, good desires planted, crooked and rugged tempers made straight and softened, and every hindrance removed, that we may be ready for His will on earth and prepared for His heavenly kingdom.’ As we continue to pray for God’s kingdom to come and His will to be done on earth as it is in heaven (Matt 6:10), let’s be prepared for the construction work needed in our hearts and in our nation so that the way is prepared and ready for our God to move in revival.

Stephen spoke tonight about knowing God. Recently, he has spoken about trust and wisdom and about the fear of the Lord. So often, we fear the unknown, but whilst we are called to fear God (in terms of respect and reverence), God is not unknown to us. He reveals Himself to us in many ways, including through the creation all around us. There is so much of God to know, for He is the Alpha and the Omega, our Father and Saviour, the God of life, and the more we know Him, the more our lives can be changed.

The primary way we know God is through the revelation of Him in the Bible. Knowing a person involves much more than just knowing what someone looks like; we have to know their thoughts, characteristics and opinions, and the chief way we get to know them is through communication. In the same way, we need to know God’s thoughts, characteristics and opinions and we learn more of Him as we develop in prayer.

We need to listen, hear and read the Bible in order to know more of God – in whatever medium we find easiest. These days, we can absorb the Bible through video and audio as well as through reading the actual book; we can read it on a Kindle or tablet or even on a wristwatch! Josh 1:8-9 reminds us that we need to meditate on this word day and night (see also Ps 1:2). Meditation invovles chewing over a verse, pondering it, considering its meaning and delighting in it. (Ps 119:14, 16)

We desperately need to pick up God’s word in order to develop our knowledge of God. God’s word needs to be active within us, so that our image of God matches His revelation. Rom 8:5 reminds us that spiritual minds are set on what the Spirit desires, and if our minds are focussed on knowing God, we will grow spiritually. We may not enjoy reading much, but God’s word needs to be installed in our hearts so we must pick up God’s word in order to develop our knowledge of God. Ultimately, John 6:45 reminds us that they shall all be taught by God; we need to take the word of God and read it so that we can know and be taught by Him.

Paul makes it clear that we need the encouragement from being united with Christ and the comfort from his love and the fellowship or sharing in His Spirit and to know God’s tenderness and compassion before we can reach out to others. He goes on to tell the Philippians that his joy will be made complete if they are ‘like-minded’, if they have the same love, if they are one in spirit and of one mind. (Phil 2:2) They – and we – are called to live in a radically different way to the rest of the world, doing nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but living in humility and valuing others above themselves, putting the interests of other people before their own interests. (Phil 2:3-4) He goes on to show us how Jesus himself did this and how this is the model for our lives in Christ. But it all starts with an understanding of how much God has done for us and from an encouragement which becomes a fuel.

Encouragement means to give courage to, to instil courage in. Most of us don’t think we are particularly brave, nor do we think that it takes courage simply to live, never mind to live well and to live by faith. But I think that courage is needed for life and that’s not simply talking about physical courage or even physical strength, admirable though those things are. For us to be encouraged, to have the actual courage we need to live for God in a world that generally dismisses God and in many areas is actively hostile towards Him and His followers, we have to meditate on spiritual truths because it’s through this meditation and pondering that we actually receive the strength and courage we need. I believe that as we dwell on the things Paul mentions in Philippians 2:1 – the knowledge that we’re united in Christ, that we are loved totally and unconditionally by God, that we share in the life of God Himself through the fellowship of the Holy Spirit and that we serve a God of tenderness and compassion –  we are actually given the courage to live like this ourselves, serving others and putting them before our own interests, loving others even when that love is not returned and reflecting God’s character to a world that will only see Him through us. Our strength comes not from ourselves, but from God, a God whose weakness is stronger than our strength. 2 Cor 13:4 tells us that Christ was crucified in weakness, yet lives by God’s power, and goes on to say, ‘Likewise, we are weak in him, yet by God’s power we will live with him in our dealing with you.’ Ultimately, it’s when we are weak but dependent on God that we are strong, when we are reliant on Him that we can become the people He wants us to be.

This morning we continued our meditations on Philippians, looking at Phil 2:1-11, and verses 1-4 in particular. Ralph Waldo Emerson said, ‘You become what you think about all day long’ and it’s vital that we think about good things (Phil 4:8) and allow God’s Word to shape our lives, rather than being overwhelmed by negative influences. Focussing on Christ is essential if we are to keep strong and stand firm (see Col 1:1-3).

Encouragement From Being United With Christ (Phil 2:1)

Before we can ever talk about unity with each other, we have to dwell on the fact that we are united with Christ. Jesus prayed for us to be one as He and the Father are one (John 17:21-22) and Paul used the phrase ‘in Christ’ so many times to describe our relationship with Him. Left to our own devices, we would be a people to be pitied, a people without hope, but because we are united in Christ, in a union that nothing at all can ever shatter, we can be encouraged. It’s because of this relationship that we can rejoice, since Christ’s Spirit dwells in us and we have the same power in us that raised Christ from the dead. (Eph 1:19-21, Eph 13-14). When we understand that we individually are united with Christ and that we collectively are united with Christ, we are guarded against the isolation and loneliness so many have been feeling, and we realise we are on the winning team. (1 John 4:4)

The Comfort of God’s Love

Knowing we are loved totally and unconditionally by God is the most encouraging thing we can ponder on! Nothing at all can separate us from God’s love (Rom 8:35-39), a love that is both everlasting and unfailing (Jer 31:3, Ps 26:3). We often feel a failure and that God would not love us if He really knew us, but Ps 139 reminds us that God knows everything about us and still loves us! God is love (1 Jn 4:4, 8) and lavishes us His love on us (1 John 3:1), so no matter what is happening to us, we know that we are loved.

Partnership With God’s Spirit

Paul says we have fellowship with God’s Holy Spirit; we participate in Him or partner with Him. Rom 8:5-9 shows us the blessings which are available to us through our partnership with the Spirit are ‘life and peace’, Paul says. We are brought into fellowship with God through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ and His Spirit confirms in our hearts that we are children of God. Again, these are the truths which need to occupy our thoughts and reflections, for these truths have the power to transform how we live – not in anxiety, fear, dread and condemnation, but in freedom, peace, joy and life.

Tenderness & Compassion

Many of us struggle to show tenderness and compassion, often because we have not really experienced these in our own lives. Maybe we’ve lived by strict rules; maybe we only think of God as the Father who punishes His children when they step out of line. The Bible shows us a God who is ultimately full of tenderness and compassion, however. Isaiah likens God to a mother: ‘Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget,  I will not forget you!’ (Is 49:15) Over and over again, He is described as compassionate: ‘As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him; for he knows how we are formed, he remembers that we are dust.’ (Ps 103:13-14) We see a God who cares; it says in Matthew 9 of Jesus, ‘When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.’ (Matt 9:36) Later, as He entered Jerusalem, he wept over it (Luke 19:41); He cared passionately for people. Matthew tells us that He fulfilled Isaiah’s prophecy, ‘A bruised reed he will not break, and a smouldering wick he will not snuff out.’ (Is 43:3, Matt 12:20) That’s the kind of God we have.