The Lord is our refuge

[AI translation] As many of you know, during the days of this week so far, we have been preaching from the well-known hymn of Martin Luther. First, "Our God is strong," then, "If He be with us, who shall be against us?" and then, "Our strength is nothing in itself?" This in itself is worth a lot as a slogan, it encourages, comforts... The Lord is the shelter of God: that is what most people want to receive. There is no better feeling in the world than to be hidden in the shelter of some loving great power, to feel safe in one's own little life, to know that Someone is watching over me, thinking of me, protecting me, surrounding me with a protective arm. For there are so many troubles and dangers lurking around us, we would feel so helpless and helpless if there were not a protecting Someone above us - almost all of life would be a meaningless mess, a whimsical game, if we could not trust that "The Lord is our refuge!" Yes: anyone who has any idea of God would like above all things to have His protecting grace. But then, sooner or later, almost every person realizes that to believe in God's protection is not as easy as it seems. Well, the story I have just read illustrates perfectly what this line of the ancient Reformation hymn means in practice: "The Lord is our refuge."To be able to say this with real authenticity, to draw strength from it, one must first of all believe in God as these three men in the story believed. Their faith was not a faith in the rational sense, that is to say, it did not consist in the intellectual acceptance of certain doctrines or doctrines of faith. True faith is not about understanding and holding true certain claims about God's existence, power, love... What would Sidrach, Meshach and Abednego have understood in that predicament, under the threats of the mighty heathen king, by any beautiful and true theories, what would it have helped them if they had only known the truth, if they had only had an intellectual conviction that their faith and their world-view were the right, the true, the God-ward?! Such a belief would have got them nowhere. Their faith was something much more personal, more existential than a mere theoretical conviction. So if you just have it in your head as a nice saying that God is our protection: that's not partaking of it.
But neither were they just romantic beliefs that manifested themselves in certain lofty, beautiful sentiments. Faith is often confused with emotion, with a higher mood. Many people think that they really believe when they feel something sublime and heavenly in their hearts, when they feel the nearness of God's protecting love in their hearts almost experientially... Well: I don't think that when these three men stood before Nebuchadnezzar and heard the sentence of the fiery furnace awaiting them: I don't think that in this hell on earth any sublime and heavenly feeling was wafting through their hearts. Faith is not always an emotion. Indeed, faith is other than emotion.
It is also clear from the example of the three men that faith is not just a matter of a certain kind of action. Faith and action are very closely related, even intertwined, but it does not follow that good action in itself is the same as faith. Those three men in the fiery furnace were paralysed in every action by the ropes by which they were bound, and even if they had wanted to, they could not have done anything good to each other or to others, but they believed. Their faith could not be paralysed by threats or cruelty, by ropes or burning fire.
So the deepest essence of faith is not a function of reason, because sometimes we believe in a way that transcends all reason, nor is it a matter of emotional life, because sometimes we believe without feeling the presence of God, nor is it an action of doing good, because sometimes we believe paralyzed by all action, but something else: a personal relationship with Someone, a personal relationship with Someone. Believing: this means, above all, being in living communion with Someone, existing in a higher context. Just as in a friendly relationship one cannot exist only alone, the concept of friendship implies the relationship in which I am with someone, the intimate relationship I have with someone. In the same way, faith is such a relationship, a mysterious spiritual communion with God. Faith is the connection, the bond, that transcends all understanding and often emotion, through which the invisible God takes hold of and takes control of my life. Through which God, and more specifically Jesus, becomes the centre of my life, He is Lord over me. Of course, it follows, but it only follows as a consequence, that a person who believes in this way thinks differently, feels differently and acts differently. But this relationship, this spiritual connection, is the first and most important thing in faith.
Now, he who believes in God in this way, who is thus united to God, who is thus related to his Lord, can undoubtedly count on the protection of this Lord. It was in this faith that these three men could face danger with such unshaken calmness, and it was in this faith that they dared to say with such boldness to the dreaded king, "Behold, our God whom we serve can deliver us out of the burning fiery furnace, and out of thy hand, O king, will he deliver us." Today, we are reminded involuntarily of a famous scene from 450 years ago: in 1518, a grey little monk, Dr. Martin Luther, is summoned before the formidable and powerful Cajetan Cardinal. He goes, knowing that he must now die, for in Rome it was considered a fait accompli that the doomed heretic would be burned at the stake. Cajetan first asked, then threatened, to persuade Luther to recant his doctrines. "If you just say revoco, you will be saved. Just six letters (Re-vo-co), you can easily say it." Luther knew that his life was at stake, he had only to say six letters and he would be saved... Then he took a deep breath, looked deeply into the eyes of the inquisitor and said quietly but firmly: "I cannot retract anything unless I am taught something more correct, for I cannot depart from the Scriptures!' - Two years later, when he was summoned to the imperial assembly at Worms, his friends begged him not to go and expose himself to such danger, and he, already on his way, sent them a message: 'If there were as many devils in Worms as there are tiles on the roof, I would go.' The real miracle did not happen to them when they came out of the fiery furnace intact, but when, in the most critical situation, all fear was gone from their hearts! That is why they could remain confident in the face of danger. It was not because their faith was so strong and unshakable, but because they were overcome, empowered and sustained by the unshakable power of Someone else, the power of the God with Whom they were in relationship, even there, even then.
The Lord is our protection! Yes. Somewhere in Transylvania, above a Székely gate, there is this inscription: 'The gate protects, God guards!' And it is so true that even if the gate no longer protects, God still guards! God tells us this in the Bible with many images, as if to urge us to dare to trust in Him. He says these things about God: a rock, a shelter, a refuge, a certain help, a shield, an armour, a wing to cover you... all so that in the face of threatening uncertainty, in the face of lurking dangers, the believer in Him may remain courageous, serene, trusting, hopeful! That is why God says so often in the Bible, "Do not be afraid." And He never says, "Do not be afraid, for you have no reason to be afraid", but always in this way: Do not be afraid, because I am... because I am, because I am here, and because you are mine! Fear is uncertainty, faith is absolute certainty! The certainty that next to me, or above me, or behind me, is God, and I am His! That is how I understand the Psalmist when he cries out, obviously also in some distressing situation, "When I should fear, I trust in You!" (Ps 56,4) This trust in God's protection: it is the only antidote to fear! "When I should fear, I will trust in You!"
But let us be careful here: for the protection we so much desire is not always what we would like to imagine, to see realized. Let us not forget that the Lord is our protection! So it is not something that is our protection, but Someone. Something is something that we deal with: for example, a great help and protection can be a weapon, or money, or science, so that we can protect ourselves as we want to protect ourselves. But we cannot deal with the Lord in this way, we cannot use Him according to our own will: He deals with us! That is why it can happen to a man who trusts in the Lord's protection that he is thrown into the burning fiery furnace. But Zedrach, Meshach and Abednego had also foreseen this eventuality. They told the king beforehand, "The Lord may save us, but even if He doesn't, our relationship with Him will not be broken, we will trust in Him, we will serve Him alone! Yes: to trust in God's protection means to place myself at the Lord's disposal, to surrender myself to His will! True faith is not arrogant presumption, but humble adoration of the Lord. In 1944, Bonhoeffer, the great martyr of the German evangelical churches, prayed in a Nazi prison: 'Free me, Lord, but if Your name is more glorified in my death, I will accept it. It is not what happens to me that is most important, but Your glory!"
The Lord's protection is sometimes so hard to say yes to. Can you always, in every situation, say "yes, Lord"? But not with an easy shake of the head, not with a desperate surrender, not with resignation to an unchangeable fate, but with a willing bow to the Lord's power, even when He is judging you! Can you have faith in God's protection, in His victory, in His power, even when everything around you seems to be the opposite? Even if the Lord does not do what you expect and hope from Him: behold, you do not have to fall to pieces, despair, complain that I have trusted in vain, I have prayed in vain, because God is still Lord and you are still His! It is not always failure and hopeless defeat that it seems. The most terrible failure of the world, where human injustice and evil reached its climax, was the cross of Jesus on Calvary. But only apparently! Because that defeat was in fact the greatest victory of all: God's victory over the world! Ever since, every weary, sad, anxious soul has been there to be filled with the life-giving power of God's presence, to be renewed in faith, to draw encouragement and victory for its own struggle. So, even if He does not do what I expect and hope, my destiny - even my suffering and misery - is full of His loving care and grace! Even then, the Lord is our refuge.
So the Lord's protection sometimes means that He keeps His own, like Sidrach, Meshach and Abednego here, not from the fiery furnace, but in the fiery furnace! Yes, for there with them was a mysterious fourth... Who else but the mighty One Who promised that where two, three... And where Jesus is present, there all perils, there death and even the fires of hell lose their power! God's people throughout their history, the churches of the Reformation for 450 years, but many times have they been in that fiery furnace! Just think of the old circus games, bonfires, centuries of oppression, inquisitions, galleys, Huguenots, pilgrim fathers, persecuted for their faith - and yet, or perhaps because of it, we can be here now, chanting the ancient creed: "The Lord is our refuge."
In the end, the greatest triumph of the faith of these three men was not that they came out of the fire unscathed, but that the king himself was shaken and brought to his knees before the power of their God. Three of them steadfastly confessed that the Lord is our protection - and one king came to a different conclusion... True faith always has such unexpected, unhoped-for results. It means that your faith is not only the private, private affair of your soul with God, but, together with my faith and the faith of others, it is the earthly base, the strategic fulcrum, of the heavenly King, from which He Himself is conducting His spiritual manoeuvres in this world, so that at last every knee shall bow to Him and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father! - This is why the faith of a congregation is so crucial, so that the ancient song may continue to ring in our lips with true faith:
Our God is strong,
Our good armour and shield,
If he is with us, who is against us?
The Lord is our refuge.
The arch enemy
Even now he persecutes us,
His army is great,
The weapon of deceit;
There's no other like it on earth.
Our strength alone is worth nothing,
We would soon fall,
But the heroic leader fights for us,
Who God has ordained for us.
Ask: who is he?
It is Jesus Christ,
the holy Son of God,
Lord of heaven and earth,
He is our triumph.
(Canto 390, verses 1-2)
Amen
Date: 31 October 1968 Reformation (afternoon)