A Secure World?
Do you think we live in a secure world? If you don’t, you’re not alone. And let’s face it, there isn’t much reason to feel secure about our world. The conflict in the Middle East has reached what is likely an uneasy ceasefire. British authorities recently discovered, and thankfully stopped, a plot to terrorize several airliners headed for the US. As a result of this and the general mood that characterizes our world, many people are more reticent or downright scared to travel south of the border or across the globe by plane or any other means. There are guns and metal detectors in big city and inner city schools. People wonder and worry about what some scientists predict is an inevitable pandemic. We are surrounded by enemies we can’t even see and by some that we can see. Given the state of our world there is plenty of reason to feel insecure.
The same is true of our jobs and all the ways in which we make a living. Picture a manager and a sales rep of a big company standing and looking at a map on which colored pins indicate the company rep in each area. The manager looks at the map and then looks at the rep beside him and says, “I’m not going to fire you, Wilson, but I’m loosening your pin a bit just to emphasize the insecurity of your situation.” Whether we are the employer or the employee, all of our pins are at least a little loose. There is no ultimate job security.
The story is told of a monastery in Portugal perched high on a 3,000 foot cliff accessible only by a terrifying ride in a swaying basket. The basket is pulled with a single rope by several strong men, sweating under the strain. One American tourist who visited the site got nervous halfway up the cliff when he noticed that the rope was old and frayed. Hoping to relieve his fear he asked, “How often do you change the rope?” The monk in charge replied, “Whenever it breaks!” Well, in this life many of the things people turn to for security feel like one of those old and fraying ropes—and they’re just waiting for it to break.
But you would think that God’s people would always feel secure. After all, we don’t base our security on global security or job security; we base our security on a God who promises, according to Jesus, that no one and nothing can snatch us from our Father’s hand (John 10: 27). We are secure in the hands of a loving and gracious God who holds us tightly—and so it is in this promise that we trust.
Or do we? Or do we sometimes wonder about our own security? We hear the phrase “eternal security” and ask whether it applies to us. Do we really believe that nothing can separate us from the love of God in Jesus Christ our Lord? Maybe all of us here do. That would be ideal. But I imagine that many of us have felt at times that maybe we’ve slipped off the path of the righteous, have backslidden in our faith, and are no longer so secure in the hands of God. As a result we feel as insecure about our faith as we do about everything else.
In one of his talks at this year’s Leadership Summit Bill Hybels mentioned speaking with another Christian leader who in the course of their conversation said something about heaven to the effect that “I hope I manage to get in.” Who knows how seriously we should take such a comment, but you could just imagine that person crossing their fingers with a silly grin on their face. Hybels, of course, found it strange that someone who is a Christian could have such an attitude. Hope I’ll make it. But I wonder if it is so strange. And even if it is strange for Christians to think this way, it likely isn’t for most people who are not believers. People who are not Christians probably see religious faith as just another old and fraying rope hardly worth holding onto. Our Scripture today hopefully dispels this as false and points us toward something, or in this case Someone, who can give us such eternal security.
“The Lord Surrounds His People”
Psalm 125 is about security and where we can ultimately find it. To describe the sort of security available for God’s people, the psalm uses the image of the city of Jerusalem. Jerusalem was surrounded by a circle of mountains—“as the mountains surround Jerusalem,” it says in verse 2—and it tells us that this is an image of God’s relationship with us—verse 2 continues, “so the Lord surrounds his people.” When we read this psalm we can easily imagine those pilgrims arriving at Jerusalem for one of the yearly festivals, looking at the panoramic view of those mountains and interpreting it as a metaphor for God’s eternal protection. These mountains, as Eugene Peterson says, “illustrated and enforced the reality of God’s secure love and care.” They see the mountains and they sing this song about the security that God provides.
Yet the fact that someone wrote this song tells us that even the people of Israel needed to be reminded of the security God provides. This makes perfect sense, since throughout their history—from their enslavement in Egypt to being ruled by the Roman Empire in Jesus’ day—God’s people have found themselves in one sort of captivity or another by other nations. Even though we have in this psalm the image used here of Jerusalem securely surrounded by mountains, these mountains weren’t enough to prevent other nations from marching in and taking over. The metaphor has its limits, and this tells us that we always need to remember what it says in Psalm 121: “I lift my eyes to the hills—from where will my help come?” And as we know, it comes not from mountains, but from the Lord “who made heaven and earth.” We don’t have to build our own walls. We could never build them securely enough. There aren’t enough locked doors to protect us completely. But, as Psalm 46: 1 says, “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.”
So Israel knew the reality of an insecure world. They knew that nothing in this world could give them security. Yet they sang this song. They sang this song despite circumstances they faced. This is a song of trust—for verse 1 does say “those who trust in the Lord”—and this is a song of hope. It’s a song of hope because this is an insecure world and it always will be; the cry, “how long,” fills the psalms. In this world it always seems that the people of God, as one scholar says, “Live in circumstances that make it appear that the wicked are in control.” Until the day of Jesus the prayer let it be “on earth as it is in heaven” will remain unanswered. Until that prayer is answered, though, just like Israel we should keep singing this song. But here’s the question: is there anything that keeps us from singing this song? I want to mention three things that can seem to threaten our security in God and why they shouldn’t.
The Insecurity of Doubt
Take a look at verse 1 and what does it say? “Those who trust in the Lord are like Mount Zion, which cannot be moved, but abides forever.” This is a wonderful image, isn’t it? Here we have an image of God’s people, confident in their trust and steadfast in their faith, virtually unmovable. But the real question is how many of us feel like Mount Zion right now? How many of us feel unmovable and as steadfast and confident as the description of Jerusalem in this verse? Don’t worry, I’m not going to ask for a show of hands!
But think about the people of Israel. Think about their forty years in the wilderness, wandering from Egypt to Mount Sinai to the Jordan River on the edge of the Promised Land. Think about how they complained about the manna or grumbled about how better off they were in Egypt. Think about the many times they left God and ran after the man-made idols and religions of the surrounding nations. Think about Jesus’ disciples getting Spirit-filled in the upper room before deserting and denying him when he was arrested.
We all have moments and times and periods of doubt and even despair. Despite what Psalm 125 says, we do feel moved and we don’t feel at all like Mount Zion. We feel anything but steady. One moment I feel filled with faith and I’m ready to take on the world, and the next moment I am dragged down by doubt and discouragement.
So it would seem that God’s people are never the steady rock that God Himself promises to be. But thankfully God is. Thankfully God is always forgiving, merciful, loving, and gracious, even in His judgements. Singing this song, we are called to trust in God’s promises even when our feelings fail us. Because while our feelings are important for many things, “they tell me next to nothing about God or my relation to God.” As Peterson says, “My security comes from God, not from how I feel.” To follow God in whatever circumstances come my way is a decision to live by what I know about God from Scripture, not by how I feel about God any given moment. My feelings will fail me, even betray me, but God never will. I may be temporarily moved by doubt, but I am still unmovable and secure in God’s hands. “As the mountains surround Jerusalem, so the Lord surrounds his people.”
The Insecurity of Evil
Our feelings of doubt are not the only thing that shakes our sense of security in God—pain and suffering do a good job of this too. Bad stuff happens, and we wonder how we can trust in God’s secure care if such care doesn’t keep such bad stuff from happening. The reality of pain and suffering provides theologians with some of the biggest and most unanswerable questions. How can a God who is infinitely loving and powerful permit the reality of evil and suffering? The technical theological phrase to describe the intellectual attempt to deal with such questions is theodicy. But no matter what kinds of answers theologians come up with, they never satisfy the heart. We can still be shaken.
The psalmist here in our passage was no stranger, as we know, to suffering and pain. The people of Israel had their fair share of hard times. We know this. We read it on page after page of Scripture: sickness and disease and death, persecution and oppression, military invasion and armed attack. The person who wrote Psalm 125 was not immune to such realities—he lived in the middle of them and so did the rest of his people. But we look at this psalm and we ask, why did all of this not obliterate his confidence and trust in the security of God?
The answer is in verse 3. We’ve already said how we live in a world where it looks like the wicked are always in control. But what does this verse say? “For the scepter of wickedness shall not rest on the land allotted to the righteous.” The key word here is rest. The reality of wickedness will not remain on the righteous. Evil, pain, suffering—none of these things is permanent. If it were permanent, even the most faithful person would break under the pressure—“for then the righteous might use their hands to do evil.” If evil is permanent, why not throw your lot in with it? But that’s not the reality of faith and that’s not the witness of our faith. Peterson puts it wonderfully: “Nothing counter to God’s justice has an eternity to it.” The kinds of evil we face in this world are not too much for faith—they were not too much for Job, they were not too much for Jeremiah, and they were not too much for Jesus. “The scepter of wickedness shall not rest on the land allotted to the righteous” because “as the mountains surround Jerusalem, so the Lord surrounds his people.”
The Insecurity of Defection
I’m guessing every one here has heard the phrase “once saved, always saved.” This is another way of saying “eternal security.” Once you are a Christian, you are always a Christian. And there is a general sense of truth to this. Once you get in, you can’t get out. The doors at the back of this church are locked!
But however true this is, we know there are exceptions. Just as God does not force us to come to Him in faith, neither does He force us to stay. In 1 Timothy 1: 19, 20, Paul mentions Hymenaeus and Alexander, both of whom have “suffered shipwreck in the faith.” Paul goes so far as to say he’s turned them over to Satan. These are two disciples who seem to have made the choice not to stay, to walk out the doors of the church and not return the next week. There’s also Judas. Perhaps these are those people who, as our Psalm says, “turn aside to their own crooked ways.”
So knowing this, we get insecure. We have moments where we wonder if we’ve made shipwreck of our faith—have we betrayed the Lord, denied Christ, and condemned ourselves? Will I someday turn aside to my own crooked ways? Or maybe, worse, I already have and don’t know it. How do I know that I haven’t already lost faith, especially in those moments of doubt when feelings of uncertainly seem to overtake me, or in those periods of pain and difficulty?
Here’s a tip: you will know if you have. There is no unconscious slipping from salvation to perdition. There is no way in which we abandon our faith without being aware of it. Yes, we have our ups and downs. Yes, we wander. We are sheep, and sheep sometimes get away from the shepherd. But the shepherd calls out and looks for and finds his sheep. But you don’t backslide without knowing it. Just like discipleship is a decision, so is leaving your post. Defection is a deliberate and sustained act of rejection. It is a choice, not chance. We are all sinners, wanderers, and doubters. But God is faithful and worthy of our trust—we are secure because of Him and not because of ourselves. “As the mountains surround Jerusalem, so the Lord surrounds his people.”
The Ultimate Security
Watchman Nee tells about a new convert who came in deep distress to see him. “No matter how much I pray, no matter how hard I try, I simply cannot seem to be faithful to my Lord. I think I’m losing my salvation.” Nee said, “Do you see this dog here? He is my dog. He is house-trained; he never makes a mess; he is obedient; he is a pure delight to me. Out in the kitchen I have a son, a baby son. He makes a mess, he throws his food around, he fouls his clothes, he is a total mess. But who is going to inherit my kingdom? Not my dog; my son is my heir. You are Jesus Christ’s heir because it is for you that He died.” We are Christ’s heirs, not through our perfection but by means of His grace.
In John 17: Jesus prays for his disciples. In verses 11 and 15 we have these words: “Holy Father, protect them in your name . . . I am not asking you to take them out of the world, but I ask you to protect them from the evil one.” Do we not believe that God the Father listens to God the Son—if this is Jesus’ prayer for us, why then should we worry, be anxious and feel so insecure about our salvation? The last line of Psalm 125 reads, “Peace be upon Israel.” This is a prayer that God will bring peace and security—another way of translating this loosely might be to say: “Relax! You are secure and in God’s hands!”
I began today with a story about a rope—one that was old and fraying—and I want to end with another rope story. A group of botanists went on an expedition into a hard-to-reach location in the Alps, searching for new varieties of flowers. One day as a scientist looked through his binoculars, he saw a beautiful, rare species growing at the bottom of a deep ravine. To reach it, someone would have to be lowered into that gorge. Noticing a local youngster standing nearby, the man asked him if he would help them get the flower. The boy was told that a rope would be tied around his waist and the men would then lower him to the floor of the canyon. Excited yet apprehensive about the adventure, the youngster peered thoughtfully into the chasm. “Wait,” he said, “I’ll be back,” and off he went. When he returned, he was accompanied by an older man. Approaching the head botanist, the boy said, “I’ll go over the cliff now and get the flower for you, but this man must hold onto the rope. He’s my dad!”
What rope are you holding onto right now? What is giving you a sense of security in this world? Is it your job, your family, your bank account, your possessions? Every rope in this world is old and fraying—ready to snap at any second the moment doubt and difficulty come your way. The funny thing is that part of the problem is that we believe we are holding onto the rope. We think that if our grip is tight enough, then the rope will hold. It’s about us—and that’s the problem. The only way to fix that problem is for us to read this psalm, again and again, and to realize that we’re not holding on to anything and that God is the one who is doing all the holding that really matters. And with Him holding us, the rope will never break.
