Chapter 22

SERMON XXII. GOD IS OUR REFUGE

Westminster Abbey, 1873.

Psalm xlvi. 1. "God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble."

This is a noble psalm, full of hope and comfort; and it will be more and more full of hope and comfort, the more faithfully we believe in the incarnation, the passion, the resurrection, and the ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ. For if we are to give credit to His express words, and to those of every book of the New Testament, and to the opinion of that Church into which we are baptised, then Jesus Christ is none other than the same Jehovah, Lord, and God who brought the Jews out of Egypt, who guided them and governed them through all their history--teaching, judging, rewarding, punishing them and all the nations of the earth. This psalm, therefore, is concerning our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom all power is given in heaven and earth, and who ascended up on high; that He might be as He had been from the beginning, King of kings and Lord of lords, the Master of this world and all the nations in it. This psalm, therefore, is a hymn concerning the kingdom of Christ and of God. It tells us something of the government which Christ has been exercising over the world ever since the beginning of it, and which He is exercising over this world now. It bids us be still, and know that He is God--that He will be exalted among the nations, and will be exalted in the earth, whether men like it or not; but that they ought to like it and rejoice in it, and find comfort in the thought that Christ Jesus is their refuge and their strength--a very present help in trouble--as the old Jew who wrote this psalm found comfort.

When this psalm was written, or what particular events it speaks of, I cannot tell, for I do not think we have any means of finding out. It may have been written in the time of David, or of Solomon, or of Hezekiah. It may possibly have been written much later. It seems to mo probably to refer--but I speak with extreme diffidence--to that Assyrian invasion, and that preservation of Jerusalem, of which we heard in the magnificent first lesson for this morning and this afternoon; when, at the same time that the Assyrians were crushing, one by one, every nation in the East, there was, as the elder Isaiah and Micah tell us plainly, a great volcanic outbreak in the Holy Land. But all this matters very little to us; because events analogous to those of which it speaks have happened not once only, but many times, and will happen often again. And this psalm lays down a rule for judging of such startling and terrible events whenever they happen, and for saying of them, "God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble." It seems from the beginning of the psalm that there had been earthquakes or hurricanes in Judea--more probably earthquakes, which were and are now frequent there. It seems as if the land had been shaken, and cliffs thrown into the