My Rock and My Fortress

Howdy. Morning. Open turning your Bibles to Psalm one forty four. We'll be studying the whole Psalm tonight. Real pleasure to open this Psalm to you because it has a lot of meaning for the youth group, has a lot of meaning to all of us because the Lord wants to speak to us through his word.

It's especially fun based on how much able to do And built your church on you, the rock. We stand upon you, the rock. We are hidden inside you, our fortress, and we behold you and praise you and want to share the strength that we have in inside of us with with our fellow man.

We pray that you would strengthen us as we walk through our days so we might declare your glory, spread your fame throughout the earth. Be with me as I break up in your word to, our body of Christ in your name, we pray. Amen. Okay. Psalm one forty four.

Read with me in verse fortress, my stronghold and my deliverer, my shield and he in whom I take refuge, who subdues people under me. The first thing I want you to notice about this Psalm is in the first verse where he says, blessed be the Lord. I want you to notice a posture of praise on the psalmist.

He starts out with this ultimately, it's gonna be we'll see it's a it's a posture of humility, but he starts out with a posture of praise where he says, blessed be the Lord, my rock. The second thing I want you to notice is two parts in this, in verses one and two.

There's a there's a my rock and a very similar word, my fortress. And just me let read those one more time. Blessed be the Lord, my rock, who trains my hands for war and my fingers for battle. He is my steadfast love and my fortress. You I want you to notice that there's a position of strength.

It would be the second point I'd want you to write down. And I would ask you whose position or sorry, who yeah, whose position of strength? It would be your position of strength. But notice I said your position of strength. But you are not the one who is strong.

You're standing in a position of strength. It is the Lord who is your rock, the cliff, the wall that you stand upon and would be the Lord, your fortress that you are enclosed in and protected in. There other there are other notes of strength here. You have my shield, my stronghold, my deliverer, and he in whom I take refuge.

There are all these ideas of strength, but it it is your position of strength that the Lord has done for you. And I want you to recognize that. And the the thing that you must do once you see that it is the Lord who is your strength is you must rest in him.

And I would tell you there's a ditch that you don't wanna fall into that we as human beings can do where we we put our strength or we assume that our strength is in other things. You've got your Ecclesiastes, book where it'll talk about the three things that you can really worship, which would be material things, materialism, pleasure, called hedonism, worship with pleasure, or intellectualism, that would be the pride of life where you worship your intellect or or your pride or your boasting.

You you would not wanna put your strength in what you can possess or in your knowledge or your pride nor in, the worship like pleasure is all there is to this life. But you wanna recognize that the Lord is your position of strength, and then you rest in that strength.

The second or the third thing I'd want you to notice here is a posture of humility, and that comes up several times in the first four verses. You'll notice it with all the pronouns my as he walks through verses one to two. He's he says my rock. He trains my hands for war and my fingers for battle.

He is my steadfast love, my fortress, my stronghold, my deliverer, my shield. You see how this man keeps saying over and over again that this is where my source of strength comes from. And then if that isn't enough already in the end of verse two, he says, this shield and and he in whom I take refuge in, it is he who subdues people under me.

If David stands above any peoples, it is only because the Lord has subdued people under him. And I would ask you, you know, the position in which you stand in your life when you recognize the the position of strength that the Lord has put you in, whether it's, how he's grown you, how your your family is doing, do you recognize that it is the Lord who has put you in that position and really have a true posture of humility?

And when I say posture of humility, what I really mean is where you understand your position as creature and utter dependence upon the Lord, the creator. And that's that's that's a it's a great thing when you can get downwind of you not being God, that you are, in fact, a creature, not the creator, and you say, Lord, I am utterly dependent upon you.

There's more humility here. Look at three and four. He recognizes all this strength in verses one and two. And then in three and four, this is phenomenal. He says, oh, Lord, what is man that you regard him or the son of man that you think of him? Man is like a breath.

His days are like a passing shadow. So that's another posture of humility where he he sees this position of strength in verses one and two, and he comes back to himself and says, what is man that you are mindful of me? I've heard one comment on a similar set of verses in the scriptures, and the application was a question.

You are described in the word of God as a mist or a breath or a shadow, what are you going to do with your mist? That's a quick thing. Consider it. You have a mist of a life. What will you do with your mist of a life? Look back in verse one with me.

We'll walk through those verses one more time. There's one there's something under this posture of humility that I want to recognize, and it's, it's all about training. First thing I want you to recognize is that you need to realize that you need training. Look how it talks in the second part of verse one.

Who trains my hands for war and my fingers for battle. The implication would be that you need training. The Lord the Lord is here in your life to train you, to equip you, and you need to realize that you need training. And in fact, you don't just need to realize you need training.

The second thing I'd have you do is to consider about training is desire training, that you realize you need training and that you would desire training. And then third, that you would submit to training, that you would yield, therefore, to refining fire. That's what the Lord wants to do in your life is he wants to refine you and to grow you.

If you've got your Bibles, open up to, Ephesians four. We'll talk about the church here. Ephesians four verse 11. And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds, and teachers to do what? Verse 12. To equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ until we all attain to the unity of the faith of the knowledge of the son of God.

To mature manhood. That's the goal. To mature manhood. What kind of mature manhood? To the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ so that we may no longer be children tossed to and fro by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness, and deceitful schemes.

So the the the Lord's will for your life is that you would grow into maturity. What kind of maturity? To to mature manhood or womanhood. It's not that the minister only, like pastor Babel, would be up here, ministering to you the word of God and delivering to you the word, breaking the bread to you and feeding you or your elders for that matter.

But what the Lord wants to do for everyone who's a saint of God in a church is that they would be equipped so that they might go and minister. He trains your hands for war and your fingers for battle. You need to be equipped. You need to be trained.

Do you see yourself as in need of training? Therefore, desire it, submit to it, yield to the refining fire of God in your life. I would say I would say an application here to to really drive it home would be when you have hard things happen in your life, don't shun them.

Don't wish them away. We've and the youth group, especially, we've had some interesting trials that we've gone through, together as leaders out at camp. And, the details aren't pertinent. But what I will tell you is we were praying one time to circumnavigate a trial. And I saw about a half a day into this trial that the Lord does not want us to go around this trial.

He means for us to go through it. And, man, do we grow. And I'm so thankful that we did not have that trial taken from us, but that the Lord was kind to refine us through fire. Also underneath the posture of humility, when you look at verse three and four, I want you to also be amazed.

Look at this. What is man that you're that you regard him? Look at his amazement that the Lord counts us the way he does. Or the son of man that you think of him, man is like a breath. His days are like a passing shadow. Be amazed at God's high regard for undeserved rebels.

That should that should cause you humility right there. And we're be to able able do that. And There's another thing about humility is I is I I would encourage you to pray, and that's gonna come in the in the next verses. Look at five to seven here. Vow your heavens, o Lord, and come down.

Touch the mountains so that they smoke. Flash forth the lightning and scatter them. Send out your arrows and route them. Stretch out your hand from on high. Rescue me and deliver me from the many waters, from the hand of foreigners whose mouth speak lies and whose right hand is a right hand of falsehood.

I want you to be reminded in this posture of humility to pray. You'll notice too in all those, verses I just read is that you are depending as you pray upon the Lord to do mighty works. Notice the action verbs as we walk through this. Bow your heavens.

Come down. Touch the mountain so that it smoke. Flash forth the lightning. Send out your arrows. Stretch out your hand. Rescue me. Deliver me. This is this is the Lord's action. So I need to be faithful on my part to pray, faithful on my part to to act as well.

But it is the Lord's power that I'm trusting in. This goes back to verses one and two. He is your deliverer. He is your rock. He is your fortress. He is your stronghold. It's it's him and whom you're whom you're taking refuge, and you need to pray, pray boldly and rest on the Lord's power in your life to see you through.

Verse verse nine, look look with me here. I would say this next point, which will be the fourth point overall, would be, to bring new praises to God. Never cease with your new songs. I will sing a new song to you, o God. Upon a 10 stringed harp, I will play to you who gives victory to kings, who rescues David, his servant, from the cruel sword.

Rescue me and deliver me from the hand of foreigners whose mouth speak lies and whose right hand is a right hand of falsehood. That verse 11 is a repeat of verse seven. But after having begged the Lord in prayer, verses five through seven, he starts off with, I'm I will sing a new song to you, oh God.

Maybe you've you've praised God in the past as you do every day, I'm sure, but the Lord, it you should never tire of coming to him again with a new song on your lips. And look with me now in verse 12. May our sons in their youth be like plants full grown, our daughters like corner pillars cut for the structure of a palace.

I'll stop there and explain, tell a real quick story. I was teaching this Psalm one time, maybe it was a couple of years ago in youth group. And, I didn't have this this quick title for our youth group picked out. But Elise Baber, is it okay if I use you in the illustration?

She goes, no fair. She raised her hand first, of course. No fair. The boys get to be trees and we're pillars. And I thought, oh, wow, that's the name of our youth group, if there ever was one, trees and pillars. Because what a great idea that the Lord has for us here.

I explained to her. I'll just tell you how I explained it to her. I said, no. Like, look at that verse. Our sons be like plants full grown trees to that. Ladies? So Moms or dads, is that what you want for your women as they grow up? To be strong in the Lord?

To be a beautiful and strong woman in the Lord? What a great thing for the Lord to have in his word for us. So may our sons in their youth so this point, this point five overall would be the goal for youth is that they would be like mature men, like mature women in their youth.

And there's a therefore here. Therefore, you need gravitas, young people. Wherever you're at, actually, you need gravitas. Gravitas weight. Gravity. You need a weightiness. You need a sobriety to your life. These are weighty things we're dealing with, serving the Lord, following him, by faith, living out your life.

These are weighty things, and you need gravitas here. There are some things you can do for gravitas, by the way, to get a weightier picture on life. You can sit in front of the word daily and take it in that you might see the Lord's plan, the story of redemption through the scriptures, that you might see the weightiness of you participating in that plan as you see his plan for the church.

Ephesians three talks about the manifold wisdom of God is being revealed to the angelic and demonic realms through the church. That's a weighty thing. Sit in the church, take in what the shepherds have for you, that your elders have for you at church, take in what the word of God has for you.

These are gonna produce gravitas in your life. Another thing you could do is be careful who you walk with. Bad company will corrupt good character. I would encourage you to sow good seeds with good friends. Galatians says that, God will not be mocked. A man will reap what he sows.

And you want to be sowing good seeds with good friends. That will really help you out to have some, to have a gravitas. He who walks with the wise grows wide. Wise, grows wide. That would be bad, growing in wisdom and things happening. That's not helpful. But the goal for your youth is to be I would encourage parents to just really lean into your kids here when they're four, when they're two, when they're 12.

It doesn't matter. Lean into your kids. This is God's this is God's will for you, that you would be a mature man or a mature woman, at a young age. And that's the act that's the standard we hold of the youth at Emanuel. We we do not give them the spam that you see other youth groups and teachers giving their youth.

We hold the fillet of scripture out to them. And we say we say we say walk in this. God's ways are the ways of life. Your ways, the Bible declares, are the ways of death or of pain. Do not go your way. Go the way of life. And we hold that out to the to the students in youth group because we want them to go God's life giving ways.

We want them to die one day with a with a call from the Lord that says, well done, good and faithful servant. And we wanna do everything on our end as we come alongside parents to help that. So we we we do have we don't have any time for spam.

We play games. We have fun. That's not spam. I'm talking about being edgy with the world and youth group and the silly, really worthless things that you see some youth groups partaking in. We don't want that because the filet is too great, and I don't have time for spam.

We don't we don't have time for spam. You parents hope that I don't have time for spam or mister Houston has time for spam with your youth. You don't want that, and we don't wanna give it. Okay? Phenomenal verse. I love one forty four verse 12. One day, we're gonna have a hat making machine, and we're gonna produce some swag with a I'm gonna patch about Psalm one forty four twelve, trees and pillars.

I've already got my son, Jack. He's already working on the logo. It's work in progress. Too many dreams. Okay. Verse 13. May our granaries be full, providing all kinds of produce. May our sheep bring forth thousands and 10 thousands in our fields. May our cattle be heavy with young, suffering no mishap or failure in bearing.

May there be no cry of distress in our streets. Blessed are the people to whom such blessings fall. I'm gonna stop there at verse 15. I'll finish verse 15 in just a second. What I want you to see here is the psalmist goes through, and he talks about lots of grand blessings.

Are are are temporal blessings a bad thing? No. The the the giver of all things is a great giver of all things. You who are parents and give great gifts at Christmastime, I'm sure, how much more is God the greatest giver of all, not just with eternal life, but also how he provides for all of our needs.

I've got time, so turn with me to Deuteronomy chapter eight if you got your Bibles open. Verse seven. I'm I'm just gonna just fortify this passage with another section of scripture here talking about the Lord doing such grand things for, the Israelites. Verse seven of chapter eight. The Lord your God is bringing you into a good land, a land of brooks, of water, of fountains and springs flowing out in the valleys and hills, a land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive trees and honey, a land in which you will eat bread without scarcity, in which you will lack nothing, a land whose stones are iron and out of whose hills you can dig copper.

And you shall eat and be full, and you shall bless the Lord your God for the good land he has given you. He warns them in verse 14. I'll skip there. What he does not want to have happen is that then your heart be lifted up, and you forget the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.

He wants the Jews to be in this land, realize the grandeur that God has given them with fig trees and olive trees and pomegranates and other places he talks about with vineyards that you did not plant, with olive trees that you did not plant, with cisterns that you did not dig.

And he wants them when they see these things to bless the Lord and give thanks to them give thanks to him. And in verse 18, he says this again, you shall remember the Lord your God for it is he he wants your mind to go to him as a provider.

It is he who gives you the power to get wealth that he may confirm his covenant that he swore to your fathers as it is to this day. And so when you see all the back in January, when you see 13 through 15 and you see all these wonderful things that the Lord that that the psalmist is praying for, that the Lord does provide in life depending on the time of Israel's faithfulness.

The Lord is so kind to provide so richly. And I would say as we're sitting here as Americans in this great nation, you would say, and we the Lord is so kind to provide such bounty for us that it's it's a it's a great thing to to pray that the Lord would provide the way he does.

But you cannot hope in those blessings. And that's why after he prays for these blessings, that's why he takes you back to the second part of verse 15 to remind you yet. It's almost like he's saying yet. I'm not gonna correct myself, but I'm gonna add a little parenthetical here.

Blessed are the people whose God is the Lord. So verse 15 a, blessed are the people to whom such blessings fall. We would say, amen. Thank you, Lord, for your provision. But more than that even, blessed are the people whose God is the Lord. It is better that the Lord is your God.

Can you imagine having all the material wealth and then yet lose your soul, yet not know the Lord? That's of no value to you. But when we see all these grand things that the Lord has provided, and we can even pray for them. You don't pray for death, do you?

Well, if you're if you have a a baby in the womb, you don't pray, you and maybe your wife bleeds in the in the caring of your child, You don't do you pray against death? Know I have in in my wife's pregnancies. I've said, Lord, death is a bad thing.

I can't cause this baby to come to fruition, but you can, oh, Lord, and we got Jack. Get number four. The Lord is kind. Death is a bad thing. Provision is a great thing. Pray pray for provision and thank the Lord. But the best thing is not that you have the provision, but that that God is your Lord.

That is the true blessed people. The true blessed people are the people whose God is the Lord, who stand upon the rock, who are enclosed in a fortress, who have a posture of humility, a posture of praise towards God, who want their hands and their fingers trained for war and battle so that they would go out into this lost and dying world and do great damage to the domain of darkness as they are doing great positive kingdom building building things for the kingdom of light as Colossians would talk about.

Alright. Pray with me. Father, we're so thankful for Psalm one forty four in particular as we consider how much we desire to be equipped. And that desire for equipping comes because we see ourselves in humility standing upon, without deserving it, standing upon this great rock, this foundation enclosed in a fortress, in a stronghold, provided for.

Our enemies are around us. They wanna do us harm, Lord, but you are our confidence. Our material wealth is not our confidence. Pleasure is not our confidence. The pride of life that we can boast in, our intellect, our knowledge, That's not our confidence, Lord, but you are our rock and our fortress, our deliverer.

We're so thankful that we can praise you for being that. And then we can, inside that provision, know that you want to equip us, you want to train us, that we might be faithful stewards more and more. Help us to excel still more, Lord, and help Emmanuel to excel.

I pray especially for these seniors as they graduate, high school and go on towards the workforce, towards college or whatever you have for them, Lord, that that they would put their feet firmly upon you, the rock, and they would pray for a refining fire. Not that they love a bad time, but they would love training, that they would seek it, desire that they might be more and more able to live for your glory, your honor, your kingdom, and do your mission on this earth.

In your name, we pray. Amen.