Praise, Power and Peace in the Psalms #9 God’s Refuge
Part 3 Still Waters - Psalms 46:8-11
Be still, and know that I am God: I will be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in the earth. The LORD of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge. Selah.
God Our Power
To the author of this Psalms, God was more than just a place to hide. He is the sustainer and the creator of all things. He is the righteous and all Holy. He is the judge of all and He has all power. By that great power one day He will cause all war and strife to cease. He will break the bow, cut the spear and burn the chariot.
Now listen for God Himself speaks in vs 10 and He tells us, “Be still, and know that I am God: I will be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in the earth.”
“Be still” literally means take your hands off! It means quit working and trying in your own strength. Quit fighting, quit worrying, quit fearing. Just be still, trust, have faith and fully know that I am God.”
Can We Be Still?
Here is the mistake we often make, we try to find peace, we try to calm the waters, we try to right the wrongs ourselves. In our power, we try to be stronger than our problems and more hopeful than our sorrows. But what we see in God’s word is that we cannot keep trying in ourselves and then know the presence and power of God. In order to know Him, we must “Be still!”
It is a mistake that mankind has always made. If you go to New York and stand in front of the United Nations building you will see a sculpture with an engraving taken from Isaiah 2:4, it says “and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.”
But that will never be true for the nations of the world, because they left out the first part of that verse which says, “And he shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.
They left out God and without God’s power, the UN will never succeed in finding peace. And on a much smaller but even truer scale nor can we. If we leave God out of our lives, if we don’t reach for Him in the raging waters, if we don’t ask Him for the waters of life, if we can’t be still, then we won’t experience God’s power in our own life.
We must be still. It is in the stillness of our hearts that God is known, not the rage of our emotions or the rush of our actions but in the stillness of our soul, that we experience God.
Is there a better illustration of this than what we find in Exodus 14. We are studying this in a really well produced and video series in our Sunday afternoon services. As Moses and the Hebrews found themselves blocked by the Red Sea in front and the chariots of Pharoah behind God spoke to Moses and he spoke to the people and in Exodus 14 :13 we read, “And Moses said unto the people, Fear ye not, stand still, and see the salvation of the LORD.”
The people of God couldn’t raise Red Sea until it stood like the walls of a giant canyon, they could not dry out the land, they could not stop the chariots from sweeping down upon them from behind. All they could do was “Stand Still and See Salvation.
In the salvation of our souls or the deliverance from despair we must hear and obey the same command, “Be still, and know that I am God.
The refrain of the Psalms sounds once more to bring the Psalms to an end. The LORD of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge.
It is the truth, the promise, the hope that each of us needs to take with us today. The Lord of the Armies of Heaven stands with us. The God of the Ages, of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, who protected, guarded and never failed them, He is also our place of safety, peace and hope.
