The Message in the Music:  A Mighty Fortress is our God

Sunday, July 13, 2008

 9^th Sunday after Pentecost

We’re starting a new series today that Carla and I have been talking about for a couple of months now.  For the next several weeks, we are going to take a look at some of the more popular hymns and songs sung in church, and examine the scriptures they are based on and the implications for our lives today.  We’re starting today with the hymn we just sang, A Mighty Fortress is our God.

This hymn is based on Psalm 46 – the psalm we chanted today – so I invite you to open your Bibles to this Psalm.  Here’s a handy-dandy little trick to find the book of Psalms: open your Bibles to the middle and you will usually open up either in the Psalms, or a book or two just before or after it. 

Psalms is the 19^th book in the Old Testament, so the order goes: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Ruth, 1^st and 2 Samuel, 1^st and 2^nd Kings, 1^st and 2^nd Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, Job and then Psalms.  Again, we are going to Psalm 46.

You can make a note of all this in the margins of your Bibles: to first put this Psalm in context, it has a heading of “For the director of music, of the sons of Korah.”  That means pretty much exactly what it says: this Psalm was written for the director of music for Israel’s worship services and most probably would be added to the regular worship liturgy.  ‘Of the sons of Korah’ refers to the priestly choir.  So, the priests in charge of the choir wrote this psalm and gave it to the director of music to include in the collection of works used in the worship services.

The heading also says, “According to the alamoth, a song.”  That means this Psalm is a song that is to be sung or chanted as part of the worship service, and it is to be sung as an alamoth.  Alamoth was a musical term that meant that the Psalm was to be played and sung by female voices only, and most likely sung only in soprano.

Have I given you enough time to find Psalm 46 yet? 

Martin Luther wrote A Mighty Fortress is our God in 1529.  The years leading up to this time were not pleasant for him: he had been excommunicated from the Roman Catholic church, and a price tag was put on his head – anyone who killed Luther was promised they would not be punished either in this life or the next.  He had to go into hiding in Germany, and even had to go so far as to alter his appearance so the people who were trying to kill him couldn’t find him.  Just before the writing of this hymn, the Black Plague made its way into Germany, and his own son and wife were affected by the plague, but managed to survive.  His own health was not well, and he suffered from heart problems and dizziness.  Finally, to top it all off, his wife gave birth to a daughter, Elizabeth, who lived only 5 months before she died – she was the actual victim of the Black Plague that Luther’s wife, Katherine, had managed to survive.

This hymn is by far and away the most popular hymn from the time of the reformation.  It has been translated into almost every known language on the face of the earth today, and is referred to as the Battle Hymn of the Reformation.  It was sung at the funeral of Dwight D. Eisenhower, and can even be heard in the background of well known TV shows and movies. 

So let’s take a look at some of the verses of the Psalm A Mighty Fortress is based on, beginning with the first verse.  I promise I won’t try and sing it soprano!  God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging. 

Ever felt like your world was crumbling?  Things were crashing down around you and the storms were raging?  Health has fled; someone has broken your trust; loved ones die or move away; jobs end; bills mount up almost as fast as all the things on the to-do list, and yet one more person is calling on you to give more of yourself than you think you have.  What does the Psalmist say?  God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear. 

We will not fear.  Go ahead and underline that.  In spite of any and everything that happens, God promises to stay with us and be our refuge from the storms and our strength when we have none left.  You can write Deuteronomy (or just Deut. for short) 31:8 in the margins of your Bible, “The LORD Himself goes before you and will be with you; He will never leave you nor forsake you.  Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged.”  This is the peace we Christians can have that the rest of the world does not.  The rest of the world calls on their money, their toys, their friends & family…themselves… to find their security, but they will never have the peace Christians can have in the midst of hard, bad times.  Why is this so?  Verse 7: The LORD Almighty is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress.

God is with us!  Are we with Him?  God comes to us and will stay with us, but He loves us too much to force Himself on us.  We can always walk away from Him – He will allow us to do that.  Good luck to those who attempt to do that, by the way.  They are not their own mighty fortress.  Jesus put it like this, and you can write the reference of Matthew 7:24-27 in the margins next to this verse: those who build on the things of this world – including themselves – build on shifting sand.  When the storms come, everything they trusted in will wash away.  The only thing that will stay and be a rock-solid foundation is the Word of God.  Those who trust in that, know it, find their lives in it, and believe it is true and applicable, will never be destroyed no matter what storms come up against them.  Jesus doesn’t say the storms won’t come, He just says that when they do, the person who has made their lives upon the rock-solid foundation of God’s Word won’t be destroyed like the person who did not; like the person to whom God came to, and they walked away from Him choosing their own path.  “I am the captain of my ship and the master of my destiny!” they say.  Yeah, just don’t be surprised when you hit the hidden rocks and you go down in the storm.

God comes to us in His Word, and He also comes to us in His Son, Jesus.  Remember what Jesus is called?  Immanuel – God with us.  In fact, you can write that in your Bibles next to verse 7, too.  Where it says, The LORD Almighty is with us, simply write “Immanuel.”  He came to be with us in the flesh, and He stays with us now.

But now a champion comes to fight, whom God Himself elected.  You ask who this may be?  The Lord of hosts is He!  Christ Jesus, mighty Lord, God’s only Son, adored.  He holds the field victorious!

He holds the field victorious!  He has won the war, and saves all who call on His name for salvation from eternal separation from God.  On the last day He will put an end to all the hostilities, all the sinning and all the storms of this life, and gather all His children and take them to the Home He has been preparing for them.[1]  Verses 9 and 10 of Psalm 46 say it this way:  He makes wars cease to the ends of the earth; He breaks the bow and shatters the spear, He burns the shields with fire. “Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.”  No matter what this life brings, no matter what happens, the end for Christians is sure.  God’s instruction to us in the midst of troubling times is to be still and trust in Him.

Though hordes of devil’s fill the land, all threatening to devour us, We tremble not, unmoved we stand; they cannot over power us.  Let this world’s tyrant rage; in battle we’ll engage; his might is doomed to fail; God’s judgment must prevail!  One little word subdues him.

That little word that subdues the devil is ‘Jesus.’  The devil and his demons are created beings.  Remember, they were once angels, so they are not all knowing like God, despite what they want you to think.  The devil cannot read your mind, so speak the name of Jesus out loud in times of trials and temptations.  Speak the name of Jesus out loud when the storms rage and the foundations are shaken.  Call on the name of Jesus when all seems hopeless and lost.  The next time the devil reminds you of your past, or tries to get you to focus on the present difficulties, you call on the name of Jesus, remind the devil of his future, and watch him tuck his pointy little tail between his legs and run off like the dog he is. 

Luther experienced hatred, suspicion and trouble on every hand.  He couldn’t always know who his friends were, and when he met new people he must have always wondered if they were people coming to talk to him in order to get to know Jesus more and more, or if they were coming to him to try and take his head off his shoulders.  Now I’m going to assume none of you have that kind of threat hanging over your head (pun so intended), but we do know that the same forces that opposed Luther in his time still oppose Christianity today.  I am NOT talking about the Catholic church, I’m talking about a world that is not, at its heart, Christian.  We are very blessed in this country in that we can practice whatever religion we want in pretty much any way we want.  In other countries around the world, that is not the case.

Last month on June 25, a Christian couple in Iran were arrested and thrown in prison.  Their crime?  “Activities against the holy religion of Islam.”  Know what they did?  They read their Bible and had Bible studies in their own home.  They were tortured and beaten so badly, that when they were released, they could hardly walk.  The case is still open, and the government is demanding they name their fellow ‘criminals’ who participated in this horrible crime by reading their Bibles and going to Bible study. This couple faces the death penalty for their ‘crime’ and they’ve been threatened that if they don’t reveal the names of others so those people can be arrested, the best thing that could happen to this couple if not being put to death is decades in an Iranian prison.  Not only that, but they are being threatened to have their 4 year old daughter taken away from them and put into an Islamic religious institution for the rest of her life.  This family are now targets of what we label ‘hate crimes’ in the U.S., and the Islamic police are watching and monitoring their every move trying to catch them and their associates in their criminal activities. 

Two weeks ago on July 2, two men were arrested in Algeria, charged and fined for having extracts from the Bible and other Christian books in their car.  They weren’t even trying to evangelize others, distribute materials, or participate in any Bible studies.  They just had portions of the Bible in the backseat of the car.  But, because they are ‘known Christians’, they suffered punishment for having this material in their possession.

The day after that happened in Algeria, in Beijing, China, the police broke into the apartment of a house pastor, and threw him, his family and all their possessions out in the street.  A house pastor is someone who holds worship services in his house, since Christianity is not tolerated, and has had to go ‘underground.’ This pastor’s family who were thrown out includes his children and his 90 year old father – they are all homeless right now.  What’s more, this pastor’s mother has been in prison for the past two years.  Her crime?  Literally being a known Christian and wandering too close to a hotel in Beijing where many will be staying for the 2008 Olympics.

In Thailand a few months ago seven pastors were arrested as they were making their way to attend some meetings.  They knew where the police checkpoint was, and they tried to take another way around it so they wouldn’t get arrested, but the police found them anyway.  A search of their bag yielded two Bibles – they have been in prison ever since with no release in site.[2]

These are just a few examples of persecution around the world of Christians.  While we don’t have that extreme here, don’t for a moment think we are not persecuted at some level.  In the United Kingdom as well as the United States, Christians are made fun of in all the media: TV, movies, print and song.  We are labeled as simple-minded dolts, raging lunatics, or hypocritical pleasure seekers.  Young people today face being teased, made fun of, and being ridiculed by their peers – and in some cases even their teachers – for being Christians.  Many Jewish converts to Christianity here in America tell of being ostracized from their community and family, even to the extent of the family considering them dead and having funerals for them.  If you’ve not experienced this kind of pressure or persecution in your life yet, consider yourself blessed, but I don’t believe it won’t happen to you at some point.

When your back is against the wall, and when you are forced to choose between Jesus and the world, I pray you – we all – will have the strength and fortitude to make a stand and case for Jesus, regardless of the cost: our friends; our family; our reputation with the world.  Stacey even has a story she can share with you all regarding a boss she had and the head to head confrontation they had when he was demanding she not be and act as a Christian, and the job it cost her.  I know she would share that story with you if you asked her.

God’s word forever shall abide, no thanks to foes who fear it; for God Himself fights by our side with weapons of the Spirit.  Were they to take our house, goods, honor child or spouse, though life be wrenched away, they cannot win the day.  The Kingdom’s ours forever.

The Kingdom’s ours forever.  The LORD Almighty is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress.

A Mighty Fortress is our God, a sword and shield victorious!

 

Amen.