God, Where’s My Help?

Today on Summit Life with JD Greer. God takes genuinely bad things and he brings his power to bear in them so that you will be better off for them having happened. It means that from the vantage point of eternity, you're going to be able to see how God exercised his power and grace in such a perfect way that all the evil that happened will in the end only lead to greater glory for God and greater joy for us. Hey, thanks for joining us here on Summit Life with Pastor JD Greer of the Summit Church in Raleigh, Durham, North Carolina.

As always, I'm your host, Molly Vitovich. You know, I've read through the Bible before and there are some passages I'm just not sure what to do with. Well, maybe more than some, maybe a lot. But the Psalms of help and protection especially fall into that category of scripture that I'm just not sure if I'm really using correctly. It seems like we gravitate toward them, but I have a hard time applying them to my life.

So why do we have this difficulty? Pastor JD helps explain these types of passages in today's message titled God Where's My Help? So grab your Bible and notebook and let's spend this last day of the year understanding God just a little bit more.

Here's Pastor JD. In the last weekend of a series called Help in which we are looking at prayers that almost all of us have prayed at some point in our lives. Whether you are a virtually spiritually mature person or whether you are not even sure you're a Christian, but you believe in God. These prayers, I would suggest to you, have come across your lips at some point. But this week I want to deal with the problem of unanswered prayer. I'm talking about those times that you've looked up toward heaven for help and you've wanted to say, God, are you even listening to me?

God, how come I'm not getting my help? You know, if you're like me, sometimes you read these promises in the Bible about God's help and His protection and you wonder where they have been at various points in your life. You know, some people say that we have a guardian angel, but you think, well, if we've got a guardian angel, mine seems to have been asleep at the wheel at some very key moments in my life. In first grade I remember I went to a Christian school and I remember my very godly teacher telling us a story about how she was driving up to an intersection and she said the red light turned green and then almost immediately she said it turned red.

It was the craziest thing and I was kind of irritated because it hadn't given us any time to go through and I drove through this intersection all the time and it never did that. And so I was mad, she said, but when I went through it and went up to the next intersection, I saw that just a couple moments ago there had been a big collision and God was protecting me from being a part of that collision and He sent an angel down to make that red light do that. And she was very sincere and I believe her, but I remember as a first grader thinking like, well, where was the angel for all those other people? Why didn't the angel step in and do something for them? Maybe you felt like, hey, where was God when I needed Him to help me?

I love God's promises of protection, but honestly, I'm not sure what to always do with them. I do find myself gravitating toward them more and more now, particularly as I get older. When I was younger, I was amazed at how much older people seem to worry.

As a kid, I was just like, it was a maze. I lived with this general kind of carefree sense of peace. I always assumed that things would turn out well in the end.

Now, as someone who is advancing in years, I see that as a rather stupid, fragile piece. So many things in life, you know, just don't turn out like we've hoped. No relationship, no relationship is immune from stress, dysfunction or fracture. No body is immune from disease or death.

No organization, no organization is immune from corruption. Everything I love seems to live under the constant threat of destruction or death. Life is full of uncertainty and often tragedy. That reminds me of this walking across this bridge over in Germany. I was there on a trip and there's this bridge, 300 years old, and it was built during the time of the bubonic plague that took place in part of Germany over there.

And so they painted every 20 feet or so, they had these scenes etched into wood that just had normal life scenes in Germany, just being at a party or doing the laundry or something. And in every one of the scenes, there was a skeleton that represented the plague or death that was somewhere in there. It was kind of like a macabre, Where's Waldo, where you tried to find the death.

Skeleton in this picture. But the message was supposed to be that at any point in life, at every turn, their death lurks and you never know when it will overtake you. To quote Shakespeare, each new morn, new widows howl, new orphans cry, new sorrows strike heaven on the face. Or in the words of that other great poet of Western civilization, Kendrick Lamar, no matter what I do, the evils of Lucy are always around me.

Lucy being his metaphor for death and Satan. Which is why I've always loved this song, because it's so overwhelming. Being a part of a world where there's so much trouble, I've memorized this psalm because it talks about God's promises of protection. Martin Luther, my favorite theologian, called this psalm the sparkling jewel of the entire Psalter. We don't know who wrote this psalm. It's one of the anonymous psalms.

We don't know the occasion of its writing. All we know is that its promises have been loved by believers for nearly 3,000 years. Psalm 91, let me walk you through it and point out a few things and then try to give you some conclusions toward the end. Psalm 91, he who dwells, the psalmist says, in the shelter of the most high will abide under the shadow of the almighty. I will say to the Lord my refuge and my fortress, my God in whom I will trust.

What you should notice in these first couple verses is the images of closeness and intimacy that are communicated in this psalm. Shelter and shadow imply that you are right up next to God. You know the word shadow does not appeal to us today as much as it would have in a hot, arid culture with no air conditioning.

In those days, getting into a shadow could make the difference between life and death. You bald-headed people know exactly what I'm talking about. It's still that way for you. Or I thought about it the other day when I was at one of my son's swim meets. I don't complain about much in life. I feel like I really don't.

I feel like I'm generally a happy person. But for the love, can we not come up with a different way to do a swim meet? For five hours. And the entire rest of that five hours, I'm just sitting out in the sweltering sun for five hours. I mean, this is, you know, my son, he seems to be having a good time because he gets in the water.

But the rest of us are just sitting there on the concrete. When I was a kid, we didn't have swim meets. We just swam and tried to drown each other for five hours.

I'm confident that Marco Polo taught me to swim faster and to avoid drowning better than any swim meet ever could. Right? Survival to fittest.

It's just how the world works. But the point is, I sit out there for five hours now in the sun. And so I've learned to get there early, even though I'm at the swim meet for five and a half hours.

I get there earlier because there's only three places of shade in the entire pool complex. And I want one of those. So to be in the shadow of God, to bring it back to the Bible now for a second, means that you are standing inside the protection of God and you are sheltered from everything that threatens you. I get the image here of a frightened child that is standing behind their parent. You've seen a two or three year old do this when they're not sure of what's happening. They go stand and they hold onto the leg. And they look out from behind them, feeling safe from whatever threatens them. Notice the personal pronouns that the Psalmist uses in verse two.

My refuge, my fortress. You ever think about how audacious it is to refer to God in a possessive sense? Honestly, I don't refer to many people in the possessive. David Thompson works here for me at the church. Hank Murphy and I work together, one of our worship leaders. We've worked together for many years and he's a very close friend.

Both of them are. But if I were to refer to Hank as my Hank, that would just seem weird, right? It would.

It would be weird. Now, I do use that possessive sense about my children. I will say my Keras, my Ali, my Raya, my Adam. And they say that about me.

They say my daddy. That is the level of intimacy. That's the kind of intimacy that is implied there in verses one and two.

And it's amazing. Verse three. In other words, he's talking about protecting you from those who are intentionally trying to harm you. And he's talking about protecting you from random accidents. He will cover you with his feathers. And under his wings, you will find refuge. His faithfulness is like a shield and a buckler. By the way, I love this image. God will put us under his wings like a mother hen covering her young. I was reminded when I was reading this of that movie March of the Public.

Have you seen that? That tells the remarkable story of how penguins give birth to baby penguins and how they keep them alive and protect them. And basically, they have them at a certain time of year. And the husband wife, the father, mother of the egg, the future penguin, will take turns keeping it under the flap of skin as they stand out there in 80 below degree weather with winds at 100 miles an hour. And they have to make a 70 mile trek to go find food.

It takes three or four months. And so whichever spouse is not on that trek, they're going to have to go find food. It just stands there in a huddle of three or four hundred other penguins while it's 80 below and while there are all these winds. And they just keep that egg, you know, covered and keep it warm so that it can survive. It is protecting it.

It is shielding it from these elements. This is similar to what God is promising in Psalm 91. I will hide you underneath my wings, underneath my feathers so that nothing really threatens you. By the way, this image of God holding us under his wings is a feminine analogy for God. Because the majority of metaphors for God in the Bible are masculine. But there is a tenderness about God and his care for us that is best reflected in a mother's love. Remember, God created, the Bible says, both male and female differently in his image. And that means that there are parts of his character that are more fully reflected in one gender than the other. Just like there are some parts of God that are reflected more often in the male, there are parts of God that are reflected more often in the female. That's why God made us different. And this is where God says, like the best kind of mother, this is the way God cares for his people.

And because of this, the Psalmist tells us, verse 5, you will not fear the terror of the night or the arrow that flies by day or the pestilence that stalks in darkness or the destruction that lays waste at noonday. A thousand may fall at your side. Ten thousand at your right hand.

By the way, ten thousand being the highest number they recorded often in those days. For us it would be like saying bazillions. Everybody's falling around you but it won't come near you. By the way, what do you think that experience is like? What's it like to be in a group of a thousand and everybody else falls except for you? What's it like to be in a group of ten thousand and everybody else around you dies but you stay alive and healthy? What would that be like?

They would do studies on you and they would try to figure out what was special about you. The Psalmist says when they study your life what they're going to find out is that your secret is the God whose shadow you stood within. It is because you made the Lord your dwelling place, the Most High, who is my refuge.

Look at this, look at this. No evil, how much evil? No evil will befall you.

No plague will come near your tent. For he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways. On their hands they will bear you up lest you strike your foot against a stone.

At this point it's almost comical. You have an angel, he says, that will keep you from so much as stubbing your toe. You will tread on the lion in the adder, the young lion and the serpent you will trample underfoot. You can walk on broken glass like that great scene in Die Hard. Remember that?

Another great 80's movie because you're going to be tougher than Bruce Willis. Then verse 14, the Lord starts speaking. Up until now you see the Psalmist has been speaking and then there's a speaker change. The last couple of verses here it's the Lord talking back to the Psalmist. Verse 14, because he holds fast to me in love, God says I will deliver him. By the way, this is not the typical Hebrew word for love. It's a word that means zeal, passion, or deep longing.

One commentator said it's the difference between loving somebody and being in love with somebody. The Lord says because I am this guy's refuge, because he's totally in love with me, because I'm his source, because I'm his hope, because I'm his shelter, I'm his home, I'm his protection, I will deliver him. I will protect him because he knows my name. So when he calls to me I will answer him. I'll be with him in trouble, I'll rescue him and I'll honor him with long life.

I will satisfy him and I will show him my salvation. Now you can probably see why I love this psalm, right? But some of you had doubts spring up even while I was reading it. Don't try to deny it.

I know what you're thinking because I think the same thing. It seems to be sane, doesn't it? If you trust God, nothing bad is going to happen to you and everything in your life is going to go awesome. Even to the point I noted of comedy. If you love God, then he's going to send his angels to so closely guard you that you won't even stub your toe.

And the opposite seems to be implied as well. If things are not going well, then it must be that you haven't made God your refuge. It must be that you're not really trusting him.

Otherwise you'd be protected from all these things. But most of us can talk about a time where bad things happen to us even when we were trusting in God. I don't know about you, but I've stubbed my toe a bunch of times at night. Where was my angel?

Is he out using the bathroom or looking down, checking his phone, texting while protecting or something and he let me stub my toe? As far as I knew I wasn't sinning at the moment when I stubbed my toe. I sinned after that moment, by the way, through some of the words that I said.

I didn't sin before it. And then you've got things in the Bible like the entire book of Job. All of these things that the Psalmist promises won't happen, all of them happen to Job. And Job's friends basically counsel him with the reasoning of Psalm 91. Like, you know, Job, if you really trusted God, none of this stuff would really happen. And at the end of the book of Job, God calls Job's friends stupid and ignorant, and they're using the reasoning of Psalm 91. They're saying the same thing that Psalm says. And while we're at it, didn't Jesus promise us that we would experience suffering and persecution? John 16, 33, in this world, you're going to have tribulation. You're going to stub your toe. Sometimes you're going to get sick. Sometimes the lions are going to bite you.

Here's the real kicker. Satan quotes this Psalm, Psalm 91, during the temptation to try and derail Jesus. He says, hey Jesus, you know, if you trust God, he's going to protect you. I mean, doesn't Psalm 91, he quotes Psalm 91, doesn't Psalm 91 say that he will not even allow you to stub your toe? That means if you throw yourself off this cliff, then he will protect you because anybody that trusts God will be protected from all harm. And if God doesn't do it, he's not keeping his word. You see, Satan knows that if you take this Psalm at face value, or you just read it superficially, you're going to become confused, you're going to get deeply disappointed, and you're probably going to pull back from God, which is what many people have done. And it's the question that many of us have, where was God, and why did all these things happen to me even when I was trusting him? So what do we do with this Psalm?

What do you do with this Psalm? I don't know. Discuss it in your small groups. Let's pray. No, I'm kidding. No, I'm kidding.

I wouldn't do that to you. That's our question, though. How do we experience the fulfillment of this Psalm in our lives?

You ready? Number one. We experience it in how God uses our pain to grow us in our knowledge of God, which is life itself. John 17, 3. I'm going to put a new verse in the Bible with each of these points here. In John 17, Jesus declares this. Now, this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. This is eternal life.

The essence of eternal life is knowing God, and that means that any harm that comes to you that increases your knowledge of and trust in God is an increase in your capacity of life, and that means that anything that leads you to that is not really harm, it is help in the bigger picture. The psalmist himself, in Psalm 91, alludes to this. Did you notice in verse 15, when we were reading, something sort of slipped in there when he said this? Verse 15, he says, God says to the psalmist, I will be with him in trouble.

It doesn't say, I'll never be in trouble. This is a clue in the Psalm that godly people are sometimes going to experience trouble, and the psalmist is anticipating that the fulfillment of this Psalm for many of us will not always be literal, at least initially. Sometimes when we stub our toe or get smitten by the pestilence, we come to know God more, and that is better than simply avoiding pain. Rather than keeping us from the flame, Jesus walks with us through the flame, and the knowledge of Him that we develop in the flame is better and more life-giving than mere avoidance of the flame. In Luke 21, Jesus alludes to the ideas in Psalm 91. He references some of the ideas in Psalm 91, and here's what he says. You will be delivered up even by parents and brothers and relatives and friends.

Watch this. Some of you, they are going to put to death. You will be hated by all for my name's sake, verse 18. But, watch this, not a hair of your head is going to perish. Now, do you see the contradiction? Some of you, they're going to put to death, but not a hair of your head is going to perish.

You're like, well, I mean, if I perish, then the hairs on my head perish, so how is it that I could perish but not the hair of my head? It seems like he's contradicting himself, but look what he says next. You see, it's by your endurance you will actually gain your lives. By your endurance, you will gain your lives. See what he's getting at? There's a kind of life that is deeper and better than merely avoiding pain. One of the best illustrations I've seen of this about how God uses this.

You ever heard of them? You remember, I think we've done it here at this church before, actually a few times. They call them cardboard testimonies.

You know what I'm talking about? Basically, you have a series of people walk up on stage here, and they have a cardboard about this big, and on one side of it, it will describe very shortly their life before Christ, and then on the back side when they flip it over, they'll describe their life after meeting Christ. The best one of those I've ever seen.

You had all these people come up, and they'll just talk about the difference that Jesus made. Well, then these two people in their probably late 40s, early 50s walk up. At first you think they're husband and wife, but there's a woman and a man, and the woman on hers says diagnosed with a very aggressive stage four breast cancer. That's hers. Then the guy holds his up, and it says, I was the doctor who diagnosed her, and then it says something like agnostic and antagonistic toward the faith. Then he flips his over and says, through her patience and joyful hope in the midst of this ordeal, I came to faith in Christ. Then she flips hers over, and it just says, worth it.

Worth it. It was worth me going through all this for me to come to know God better and for him to come to know God better as well. That's Psalm 91, and it is the testimony of every person with whom God has used pain to deepen their knowledge of God. You see in verse 16, in verse 16 when God says, with long life I will satisfy him, with long life I will show him my salvation. He's not simply talking about adding pain-free years to our lives.

He's talking about adding despair-free life to our years. That's the better version of eternal life. There's a great New Testament verse that says all this that many Christians know. They know the first part of the verse, but they don't know the next verse, the really important part. Romans 8, 28 is the part everybody knows, and we know. We know that for those who love God, all things work together for good. For those who are called according to his purpose, all things work together for good. That's the part people know.

This next part is the part that they struggle with, or they don't know. For those whom he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son. That's the good purpose. That's the good purpose that God has promised he will work all things together for. Well, what is the good purpose that God is accomplishing in your life? He's conforming you to the image of his Son, which means knowing God more.

God's goal of Christ's likeness is his greatest goal for you, and that is, as Jesus himself explained, that is eternal life itself. This is eternal life for you to know God. So I'm going to work all things in your life out for you to have real life that is communicated in poetic images throughout Psalm 91, which leads me to number two.

We experienced the fulfillment of this Psalm, number two, in God's promise to use all things for good in our lives. Let me teach you a very important Bible interpretation principle. Bible passages should never be interpreted in isolation. You interpret certain Bible passages in light of the rest of what the Bible says. In fact, this is where a lot of false doctrine gets, is you take one verse and you ignore all the other verses that will help you understand that one. This is what Satan tried to do with Psalm 91. He interprets it without knowledge of the rest of the Scriptures. You've got to read this passage through the lens of the rest of the Old and New Testaments like I've showed you.

Nevertheless, listen, this passage is still true. Verses like Romans 8.28 show you how the promises in Psalm 91 are true. Romans 8.28 promises us that God is working all things together for good.

Work together for good does not mean that bad things are really good things in disguise. It means that God takes genuinely bad things and He brings His power to bear in them so that you will be better off for them having happened. It means that from the vantage point of eternity, you're going to be able to see how God exercised His power and grace in such a perfect way that all the evil that happened will in the end only lead to greater glory for God and greater joy for us. That is the ultimate defeat of evil. All evil deeds ultimately accomplish the reverse of what their authors intended. We see glimpses of this all throughout the Bible.

We see it most clearly in the cross where Satan and evil people did their worst and God turned even that for our salvation. And you can rest assured, God is doing the same thing with your pain. You're listening to Pastor JD Greer and this is Summit Life.

Are you a resolution maker? Have you set spiritual goals for the coming year? And if there's one thing that'll transform your walk with the Lord more than anything else, it's spending one-on-one time in God's Word. If you'd like to take that challenge and read more of the Bible than you ever have before, we have a tool to help you with that. We've included a year-long Bible reading plan through key passages in only one or two chapters per day in the 2022 Summit Life Planner. Plus, the planner also comes with monthly Bible verses to memorize and remind you to rejoice always.

And it's also got plenty of room for you to keep track of appointments or assignments. Today is the last day to have your gift count for 2021. So if you've never given to support this ministry, right now is the time to take that step. If Summit Life has made a difference in your walk with God, will you give that gift to someone else today by giving a generous year-end gift? When you donate, we'll say thanks by sending you the 2022 Summit Life Planner. It comes with Bible verses and a Bible reading plan to help you keep Jesus at the center of all your plans in the new year.

Ask for the planner when you give an important year-end gift by calling 866-335-5220 or by giving online at jdgreer.com. And if you haven't signed up for our email list yet, be sure to do that today. It is the best way to stay up to date with this ministry. You'll get Pastor JD's latest blog posts and we'll also make sure that you never miss a new resource or series. Sign up today at jdgreer.com.

I'm Molly Benovitch. Happy New Year and be sure to join us again next week for the kickoff of not just a new year, but a brand new teaching series that has never before aired on Summit Life. Nothing but the best for our Summit Life family. We'll see you right back here Monday on Summit Life with J.D. Greer. Today's program was produced and sponsored by J.D. Greer Ministries.