Sermon You Can Count On God

When The Ground Shakes, God Does Not

There is a particular kind of fear that does not announce itself politely. It does not knock on the door and wait. It arrives in the form of a phone call you were not expecting, a diagnosis that changes everything, a relationship that suddenly unravels, a world that seems to be spinning faster than anyone can keep up with. And in those moments, the question that rises up from somewhere deep inside is not a theological question. It is a personal one. Can I count on God right now? Not in theory. Not in a hymn. Right now, in this.

That is exactly the question Psalm 46 was written to answer.

Open your Bible to Psalm 46. The sons of Korah wrote this psalm, and they wrote it for people who were not sitting in comfortable circumstances. They wrote it for people who could hear the earth moving beneath their feet. Look at what they describe in the opening verses. Mountains tumbling into the sea. Waters roaring and foaming. The earth itself shaking. This is not poetic decoration. This is a picture of the world coming apart at the seams. And right in the middle of all that chaos, they make one of the most confident declarations in all of Scripture. God is our refuge and strength, a helper who is always found in times of trouble. Therefore we will not be afraid.

Notice the logic. It is not that the trouble goes away. The mountains are still falling. The waters are still roaring. The psalm does not promise you a calm sea. It promises you an unshakeable God. And that changes everything.

Here is the central claim of this message. You can count on God not because your circumstances are stable, but because His character is. The ground may shake. He does not.

Let us stay in the psalm for a moment, because there is something here that is easy to read past. Verse 4 introduces a river. There is a river whose streams bring joy to the city of God, the holy dwelling place of the Most High. Now, if you know your geography, you know that Jerusalem, the city of God, did not have a great river running through it. The Nile was in Egypt. The Euphrates was in Babylon. Jerusalem sat on a rocky hill. So what is this river?

This river is not a geographic feature. It is a theological one. It is a picture of the steady, constant, life-giving presence of God flowing into the lives of His people even when the nations are in an uproar, even when kingdoms topple, even when the earth shakes. The world around the city may be in chaos, but there is a river. There is a source that does not run dry. God is in the midst of her. She will not be toppled. God will help her when the morning comes.

That phrase, when the morning comes, is worth sitting with. It does not say the night will not be long. It does not say the darkness will not be real. It says morning comes, and God is already there when it does. That is the kind of God we are dealing with. He is not scrambling to catch up with your situation. He is already in your morning.

Now turn with me to Lamentations chapter 3. This is a very different kind of writing. Psalm 46 is triumphant. Lamentations is raw. The prophet Jeremiah is writing from the ruins of Jerusalem. The city has fallen. The temple has been destroyed. The people have been carried into exile. And Jeremiah is not pretending it is fine. He says in the opening verses of this chapter that he has been driven into darkness, that his flesh and skin have been worn away, that he has been walled in with no way out. He is not exaggerating for effect. He is describing genuine devastation.

But then something shifts. Verse 21. Yet I call this to mind, and therefore I have hope. What does he call to mind? The faithful love of the Lord never ends. His mercies never cease. They are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness. The Lord is my portion, says my soul, therefore I will hope in him.

Do you see what Jeremiah is doing? He is not denying the grief. He is not pretending the ruins are not ruins. He is making a choice. He is calling something to mind. He is deliberately turning his attention from the devastation around him to the character of God above him. And the word he uses for faithful love is the Hebrew word hesed. It is one of the richest words in the Old Testament. It means steadfast love, covenant loyalty, mercy that does not waver. It is the love of a God who made a promise and will not break it regardless of what the circumstances look like.

Jeremiah is saying, I am sitting in ashes, and I still believe this. God's mercies are new every morning. His faithfulness is great. I can count on that even here.

Now here is where both of these passages point us to something even greater than themselves. The God of Psalm 46 and the God of Lamentations 3 is not an abstract force or a philosophical idea. He is a God who entered human history in the person of Jesus Christ. And if you want to see what hesed, what steadfast covenant love, looks like in a human face, look at the cross.

Jesus did not observe our suffering from a safe distance. He walked into it. He was acquainted with grief. He was betrayed by a friend. He was abandoned in His darkest hour. He cried out from the cross, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? He knows what it feels like when the ground shakes. And He went through death itself so that we would never have to face it alone.

The resurrection is God's final answer to the question of whether He can be trusted. When God raised Jesus from the dead, He was declaring to every generation that the grave does not have the last word, that chaos does not win, that the morning always comes. If you can count on anything in this world, you can count on that.

So what does this look like practically? How do you actually live from this truth when things are hard?

First, Psalm 46 gives us a practice. Verse 10 says, Stop fighting and know that I am God. Some translations say, Be still and know that I am God. The word in the original language carries the idea of releasing your grip, letting your hands go slack, ceasing from the frantic effort to control what you cannot control. This is not passivity. It is not giving up. It is the deliberate act of trusting that God is God and you are not. It is saying, I cannot fix this, but I know who can. It is the posture of a person who has decided that God's character is the most reliable thing in their universe.

That is harder than it sounds. When things are falling apart, every instinct tells you to grip tighter, to work harder, to worry more. And God says, Stop. Be still. Know that I am God. Let that truth settle into your bones.

Second, Lamentations 3 gives us a practice as well. Jeremiah says, I call this to mind. He is intentional about what he meditates on. He does not allow his circumstances to be the only voice in the room. He brings the character of God into the conversation. He says, His mercies are new every morning. He says, The Lord is my portion. He is preaching to himself. He is reminding his own soul of what is true when everything around him is screaming that things are hopeless.

You can do the same thing. When the fear rises up, when the uncertainty presses in, you can call something to mind. You can say, God has been faithful before. His love does not end. His mercies are not exhausted. Morning is coming. That is not denial. That is faith. And faith is not the absence of fear. It is the decision to trust God in the presence of fear.

Third, and this is important for those of you who are not yet sure where you stand with God. If you are here today and you have been trying to hold everything together on your own, if you have been looking for something solid to stand on and everything keeps shifting, the invitation of the gospel is this. There is a refuge. There is a strength that is not your own. His name is Jesus. He is not a concept or a coping mechanism. He is the living Son of God who died for your sin and rose from the dead, and He is offering you a relationship, not a religion, a covenant, not a contract. You can come to Him today exactly as you are, in the middle of whatever is falling apart, and find that He is already there.

Psalm 46 ends with a declaration. The Lord of Armies is with us. The God of Jacob is our stronghold. That word stronghold means a high place of safety, a fortress that cannot be breached. Not a place where trouble never comes, but a place where trouble cannot ultimately win.

The ground will shake in this life. There will be seasons when the mountains seem to be falling into the sea. There will be mornings when you wake up and the grief is the first thing you feel. None of that is a sign that God has abandoned you. It is an invitation to run to the one place that does not shake.

You can count on God. Not because life will always be easy. Not because every prayer will be answered the way you hoped. But because His character does not change. His love does not end. His mercies are new every morning. His faithfulness is great. And He proved it once and for all when He raised His Son from the dead.

The ground may shake. He does not. And that is enough.

Sources Consulted

Allen, Leslie C. Psalms 101-150. Word Biblical Commentary. Word Books, 1983.

Goldingay, John. Psalms, Volume 2: Psalms 42-89. Baker Commentary on the Old Testament Wisdom and Psalms. Baker Academic, 2007.

Harrison, R. K. Jeremiah and Lamentations. Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries. InterVarsity Press, 1973.

Kidner, Derek. Psalms 1-72. Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries. InterVarsity Press, 1973.

O'Connor, Kathleen M. Lamentations and the Tears of the World. Orbis Books, 2002.

Schreiner, Thomas R. New Testament Theology: Magnifying God in Christ. Baker Academic, 2008.