Connecting with God
How to Experience God's Protection
Psalm 91
As I studied Psalm 91 this week, I was reminded of my experiences with 2 different young men whom I met when I worked in Yellowstone National Park back in the summer of 1971. Two young men whom I never saw again, but strangely whose vastly different fates when faced with a very real danger I read about years after knowing them as fellow employees at Canyon Village that summer.
I didn't know either of them all that well, but I knew them well enough to know whether they were Christians or not. The first one was a fellow pot washer, hired mid-summer, who was exactly my age, a tall, dark, and seemingly somewhat sleepy young man by the name of Richard Paul Coombs. I remember his name, his first and second name especially, because from the beginning he made it known that he could be called by either of his names—Richard or Paul. He was an engineering student in college and was from Polson, Montana. By that time I was already a witnessing Christian, so as we stood over the sink washing pots one of the few times we were scheduled together, I presented the Four Spiritual Laws to him. His response was a somewhat distant and non-committal, "that's always the way I thought it was." I later learned what I think was the reason for his non-committal response—he was thought of as the king of the Potheads, a very regular and passionate user of weed among those so engaged in Yellowstone.
His story is a sad one. Three years later I was working in the newsroom for the Whittier Daily News in California where I was a city reporter and sportswriter, when over the United Press International teletype machine came a brief news story about a tragic situation that had occurred in Seattle. It seems that a young man, Richard Paul Coombs, age 22 of Polson, Montana, had just graduated from college and was visiting his fiancé in an apartment building in Seattle, when he observed a robber stealing a purse from a lady. As he had attempted to intervene, he had been stabbed in the heart by the criminal, and had been killed. I don't know where young Richard Paul Coombs was spiritually at that point, but the chilling story has always served as a cautionary tale not to put the Lord Jesus off when you have a chance to trust Him as Your Savior, because you just never really know how long you have.
The second young man was a bright, blonde fellow, again my age, from the South with the unique name, Arvid Gates. I think I met him as we attended church services at Canyon Village. He was a born again Christian, and again, oddly, I had the privilege of reading about a very threatening situation he experienced less than 10 years later. I was reading a copy of Campus Life magazine in the 70s when I came across an article written, by of all things, a man named Arvid Gates who had been skin diving off the gulf coast. Undoubtedly, he was the same Arvid Gates I had known, and he had written this article based on a terrifying experience he had had while suspended below a skin diving boat. A large shark had made a beeline for him, turned sideways and opened his mouth. This was in the era of the movie Jaws, and so you can imagine just how terrified he must have been. And in that moment, he told in the article how he cried out to God to save him. And at the very same moment, Jaws closed his mouth, turned over and swam idly by. The article was actually about the crisis of faith that Arvid had afterward. He struggled, as I did, back then, when God actually answered his prayers with knowing whether it was a mere coincidence or an actual answer to prayer!
But after 50 years of accumulated experience of many emotional, spiritual and even physical dangers, I have no doubt about what happened that day—it was God. It was our rock, our fortress, our refuge, our deliverer, the Lord Jesus Christ who saved Arvid. The same God who saved David from Goliath, the same God who delivered David from the Lion's mouth, the same God about whom we have read Psalm 91 this morning.
This Psalm has been a favorite of mine for more than 40 years—in fact I had it memorized at one time, and it tells us how to experience God's protection. It's a simply and convenient truth for those of us willing to apply it. Simply seek his protection. Trust, pray and obey the Almighty Jesus to be protected always. But my purpose is not simply to instruct you in that this morning, but to encourage you to believe that these promises found in this verse are real, and binding, and available to any who will take refuge in our Almighty God.
Now we don't know who wrote Psalm 91. Certainly, the writer might have been David, a warrior who repeatedly and always experience God's protection against the likes of Goliath, King Saul and the armies of Israel and in countless battles against Israel's enemies. Regardless, it is the experience of anyone and everyone who seeks the Lord's protection, who have come to trust, pray and obey Him, to love Him, on a regular basis. And it is even the experience of some who merely choose to call on His precious name in crisis, in hope that He will hear.
Now obviously this Psalm was written as part of the Old Testament, before Jesus came, and what you'll notice is I'm updating its truths for us today. And so its first point this morning, found in verses one through four is this: Trust and pray to Almighty Jesus and He'll be your refuge, your fortress, your place of safety.
Verse one, the Psalmist instructs us with, "He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High, will abide in the shadow of the Almighty." And at first glance it appears that the writer is telling us the same thing two different ways. But if you really think about it, he's telling us something more. First, he's telling us that the matter of dwelling in the shelter of the Most High God is a choice. It's a decision we must make. It's not something we are to take for granted. Somehow, we must position ourselves, if only spiritually and invisibly, under the likewise invisible shelter or protection of the Most High God. Now it's interesting to note the names used for God in this context of his being our protector. He is the Most High—as in the Most High God. In the day and culture in which this was written, this was an important distinction. Idolatry, the worship of false gods, was the rule in most cultures in that day. But even in those cultures where idolatry is practiced and in many idolatrous cultures, there is a knowledge of the Most High God, the sky God, the creator, who is over all gods. And the writer is telling us that we must choose to seek the protection of the Most High God, the God of all gods, the only one, true and living God of the Bible, and that when we do we can be assured of His protection.
And how does he assure us of the Most High's protection? By stating that when we seek the shelter of his protection, the shadow of His presence and protection will not depart from us. He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will abide in the shadow of the Almighty. In other words, when we run for the Most High's protection, His protection will not be moved from us—we will remain under its protective shadow. He will not abandon us to the danger we fear, if we trust Him for His protection, if we choose, so to speak, to come under His wings.
And that is precisely the picture which the Psalmist begins to paint in this Psalm. That of a mother hen protecting her chicks, spreading her wings, so that her checks can run under her wings, and the assurance is that the Lord will not remove his protective shelter from above us, that instead we will continue to be under the protective shadow of his protective wings. A really neat way of assuring us that when we trust in the Lord for His protection, we can be assured of His continuing protection.
Then the Psalmist tells exactly how he came to dwell under the protective shelter of the Most High God—the Almighty—names specifically designed to cut any threat down to its proper size. He did so by prayer and praise. Based on his confidence in God's trustworthiness as His protector, He recites His prayer to the Lord, "I will say to the Lord, "My refuge, and my Fortress, My God, in whom I trust." In other words, if you will make the Lord, your God, he will be your place of safety, your strong fortress, fully able and trustworthy to protect you from every threat or danger.
Then the Psalmist moves to assure us that whenever we have experience safety or deliverance, it is not any mere accident or coincidence, as Arvid Gates wondered, and as I have at times wondered. No, it's not a coincidence! Verse 3, "For it is He who delivers you from the snare of the trapper, and from the deadly pestilence." Here the Psalmist refers deliberately to unseen, even deliberately hidden dangers, which because we are unaware of them, because they are unseen, we cannot protect ourselves from. The snare of the trapper is often deliberately hidden from view by the debris of the forest or the field, for obvious reasons. We would avoid it otherwise. And the deadly pestilence, as we have come to know, is spread by invisible micro-organisms. And when we seek God's protection, He protects from those things which we are not able to protect ourselves from. And then in verse 4, the picture is beautifully painted of the mother hen, protecting her brood with her wings. "He will cover you with his pinions—another word for wing, especially the jointed, inner part of the wing, and under his wings you may seek refuge. His faithfulness—His reliability, his absolute trustworthiness to keep his promises, is a shield and a bulwark. It's like a warrior's shield that keeps deadly blows from reaching the warrior. God's faithfulness to His promises and to those who belong to Him is like a bulwark—a large defensive wall or great shield against an enemies weaponry.
Notably, this very picture of a mother hen is employed by Jesus in Matthew 23:37 when he laments Jerusalem and Israel's repeated rejection of Him and His desire to protect them—and even their rejection of Him as Messiah. He says to them, “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, the way a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were unwilling.38 Behold, your house is being left to you desolate!" Interestingly, in the same context in Luke 21, Jesus warned his followers to escape the city when it was surrounded by armies, as it would be in 70 A.D. by the Roman Emperor Titus, who ultimately laid siege to it and destroyed it and its temple. Those who believed in Jesus heeded his words, and escapes when the siege was interrupted briefly, those who did not believe Jesus sought refuge in the inner city, were starved, and 300,000 of them perished in the battle which followed. A clear object lesson and a cautionary tale as to exactly how we are to seek safety and protection from the Lord—we trust Jesus, we pray and we obey and He will then be our refuge.
As Proverbs 1:32 puts it: "The waywardness of the naïve will kill them. And the complacency of fools will destroy them. But the wisdom of the wise, is to trust, pray and obey Almighty Jesus, and He will deliver them.
At this point, no doubt some of you have a question. But all Christians eventually die, and many are being martyred at an unprecedented rate in all of history today. What can we say about that?
First, that Jesus even predicted it. Luke 21:16: "But you will be betrayed even by parents and brothers and relatives and friends, and they will put some of you to death, 17 and you will be hated by all because of My name." But notice what it says even in that horrific instance, "Yet not a hair of your head will perish." In other words, we are preserved and protected eternally even when we are not protected and preserved apparently and physically.
And then there's Psalm 139:16: "And in Your book were all written the days that were ordained for me, when as yet there was not one of them." In other words, we're assured that we will live every bit of the life that God has ordained for us, and that when it's our time go home, only then will it be our time to go home."
What a blessed assurance!
So the Psalmist then assures us of just that: When you trust in the Most High God, there's nothing to fear. When you trust in the Most High, there's little nothing to fear. Regardless of the surrounding circumstances, day or night. Because you can trust in God's faithful protection, therefore, you will not be afraid of the terror by night, or the arrow that flies by day, of the pestilence that stalks in darkness or of the destruction that lays waste at noon. A thousand may fall at your side, and ten thousand at your right hand. But it shall not approach you. You will only look on with your eyes and see the recompense of the wicked." In other words, you may be on a bloody battlefield, you may be in the midst of a plague, but not one arrow will approach you, not one testy microorganism will infect you. Why, verse 9 reminds us, "For you have made the Lord, my refuge, even the Most High, your dwelling place. No evil will befall you. Did you catch that? No evil will befall you. No plague will come near your tent."
In other words, we have an Old Testament basis for the New Testament instruction, "Be anxious for nothing, no-thing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving make your request known unto God, and the God of peace shall be with you." Philippians 4:6-7.
What a picture—a thousand may fall at your side, ten thousand at hour right hand, but it will not come near you. Have you ever wondered if this is literally true?
I've never been in active combat. But when Jeanie and I went to Israel a few years ago, we came into contact with a believer who had literally experienced this. He was our tour guide, Arie Bar David, one of the very few Messianic Jews, in other words, Jews who believed in Jesus as their Messiah, in Israel in its first few decades as a renewed nation. He was born on the Mt. of Olives shortly before Israel's re-establishment as a nation, and thus fought for Israel in both the 1967 Six-Day War and the Yom Kippur War of 1973. He would often talk of the fact that he could both hear and feel bullets whizzing by his head in combat, and many of his unbelieving Jewish comrades being killed by those same bullets, but never being hit. On one occasion in Egypt during the Yom Kippur war, his unit was besieged by enemy fire from several different directions. When both of his commanders were killed, he said a light appeared to him, and he stood up and gave orders to the rest of his unit to follow him, and as he followed the light that appeared to him, both he and all of the soldiers who followed him were delivered from this impossible situation. The same kinds of things happened for his believing brothers, and he remembered how his father had rejoiced that the promises of this Psalm were true when they all came home safely to tell him of how the Lord had delivered them on the day of battle.
And what of the fate of Israel as a nation. Who can deny that it is an absolute miracle that the fledgling army of Israel was attacked by 8 surrounding Arab nations the day after Israel declared its sovereignty as an independent nation in 1948, and Israel defeated all of them. Truly, we must confess that though the horses are prepared for the day of battle, victory belongs to the Lord.
Truly, when you trust, pray and obey there is no need to fear, regardless of the circumstances.
How can this be? Verses 11-13 are devoted to answering this question. We can know the Almighty will send His angels to guard us, to give victory. "For He will give His angels charge concerning you, to guard you in all your ways." Not just one guardian angel, but guardian angels, plural. They will bear you up in their hands, that you do not strike your foot against a stone. You will tread upon the lion and the cobra, the young lion and the serpent you will trample down." Yes, no matter how powerful the threat, from the king of beasts, to the most poisonous snake of the jungle, you will tread them down. You will not merely survive, you will thrive. You will be given victory. And certainly this is especially true with regard to spiritual warfare, with regard to demons and Satan. Submit therefore to the Lord, resist the devil, even the devil and He will flee.
But some will recall that this is the very verse that the Devil quotes to Jesus as He tempted Him to jump off the temple in Luke 4. This is true. Jesus answered, "It is written, you shall not test the Lord your God." In other words, we are never to put the Lord in a position in which he must act for our welfare." Let Him allow the dangers to come; but don't deliberately put yourself in danger to test the Lord. That's not trusting the Lord, that's demanding the Lord to act—and demanding the Lord to act is not our proper role.
And finally we come to my favorite portion of the Psalm. In verses 14-16, which I recommend you memorize, the Lord becomes intimate with his beloved once again. He speaks in the first person. And He tells us know why He protects those who seek refuge under his wings. It's because you love the Lord, when you love the Lord, and show it by obeying Him, He's always going to be with you and for. When you love the Lord, He's always going to be with you and for you. You can't lose.
Verse 14, God's promise, "Because he has loved Me, therefore I will deliver him; I will set him securely on high—out of reach of danger, because he has known my name." An interesting way to put it. Do you know the name of the Lord? It was Jehovah, the I Am that I am in the Old Testament. In this day His name is Jesus, which means God saves. How appropriate, and we can expect Him to live up to His name.
As I read this I was reminded of one more amazing story of the Lord's deliverance, from a lady who attended our church occasionally some years ago. As we were sharing over a potluck she told me how she can come to faith in Christ. She was involved in an abusive marriage. Her husband had thrown her to the floor. He had an axe or a hammer in hand, and was looming over her about to strike the fatal blow when in a moment of desperation she cried out, "Jesus!"
And at that moment, an invisible entity took hold of the man, stopped his forward motion, caused him to stagger backward and drop the murder weapon. And of course, at that moment, she got up and ran. She said she later became a believer; but you know what, I think she became a believer right at that point. She discovered the truth that there really is power in the name of the Lord Jesus. "Because he has known My name, He will call upon Me and 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 let him see My salvation."
Maybe you're wondering how you can be assured of this protection, this deliverance, this salvation this morning. It comes when you trust, pray and obey in the Almighty Jesus. As the Apostle Paul said in Acts 16:31, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved." Literally, what you need to believe is that when He died on the cross, He died to pay for your sins, and when he rose again, he was raised to assure you of your future resurrection. And then you can have the same assurance the rest of us have—the blessed assurance, that when the Almighty, the Most High is on your side, who can be against you.
Let's pray.
