What does the Bible say about safety?

We ask now, Where can poor distracted man find help and safety? The answer is GOD. How does Psalm 46 begin, whose verse two we have just quoted. It begins with the word, GOD. “GOD is our Refuge and Strength, a very present help in trouble, therefore will we not fear, though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be cast into the midst of the sea.” This will be the confidence of the sorely tried remnant of Israel in a future day when circumstances will be sufficient to make the stoutest heart quail. GOD will be their Refuge. What angry wave of the sea can reach that Refuge? GOD will be their Strength. What power on earth or in hell can overwhelm that Strength? GOD will be their Strength.

"God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble." A refuge is a place to flee to from impending and known danger. A sinner's fleeing for refuge to Christ implies a sense of imminent danger: He is everlasting security from impending judgment; He is the true city of refuge from the avenger of blood (Num. 35:13, etc.). He is also the strength of His people in their conscious weakness. He does not always deliver us out of our troubles, but sustains us in them, and carries us through them, which is far better, and enables us to say in our feeble measure, "Even so Father, for so it seemed good in thy sight" (Matt. 11:26). Mary and Martha could never have known the present sympathy and resurrection power of the Lord Jesus Christ if they had not experienced the death of their brother. It was when sickness, death, the grave, and corruption, had each done its worst and seemed to have robbed them for ever of their beloved one, that the Lord stepped in, and showed them Himself as they had never before known Him. The sisters had sought the Lord in their trouble, and such is always its effect where there is real faith. Blessings tend, because of what we are, to elate us; and we run off with them to enjoy them, and forget God. Trouble brings us to our knees. It is good when our blessings also have this effect. See the beautiful example of this in Gideon (Judges 7:15). He did not rush off elated to tell the hosts of Israel the cheering tidings he had heard, but first worshipped, ere returning to the host. God was a very present help to him in his trouble; and such was the effect. But the Psalmist goes on to say "Therefore will not we fear though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea" etc.

96 The great point is, that it is God as such who is our refuge and strength. He does not say, "The Lord" (Jehovah): further on in the psalm, where relationship is in question, he does. Here the point is, that it is God in His nature contrasted with man - indeed with every power; for if God be for us, who can be against us? Faith gets hold of this. He is a refuge, where we may resort for safety; and He is strength, so that no adverse power can reach or succeed against us. It supposes that trouble, yea, insolent swellings of power, are there; but He is a present help. This secures fully; but the help is not always a present apparent one. But God Himself is looked to; and the fact that we are left wholly to Him, and that no other resource is there, makes all the power of evil immaterial to us; for it is nothing against God. "What is this confidence?" said the king of Assyria to Hezekiah. Other help we might calculate and compare the value of. This only requires faith, "Ye believe in God."

(Ps. 46:1). We do well to notice the little word "our" in the opening verse. It is true that God is a refuge; but believers can say, "God is our refuge." The world has those to whom it looks for protection, and guidance, in the time of trouble. Believers have in God their refuge from the storms and distresses of life. Moreover, God is our "strength" in weakness, and "a very present help in trouble." The better and more exact translation is, "a help in distresses very readily found."

The Christian is entitled to look up to God as a continual daily habit for help and for protection. Countless dangers surround and threaten us, but there is ever a Faithful and Omnipotent Guardian to whom we may confidently appeal before as well as in the hour of peril.

Fourthly, the believer looking to the LORD for his help, is assured that he will be kept at all seasons. In a world of warring nations we have to face ever present dangers, both "by day" and "by night." The LORD does not say to the believer, "Thou shalt not have to face these terrors even as others," but He says, "If you make Me your 'refuge', and put your 'trust' in Me, 'Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night; nor for the arrow that flies by day. Nor for the pestilence that walks in darkness; nor for the destruction that wastes at noonday" (Psalm 91:2, 5, 6).

He will look around then to the hills for help. Whence should it come? Ah! there is the well-known truth for Israel, "My help comes from Jehovah, who hath made," everything man could trust in. "He keeps Israel." "He will never slumber nor sleep" - a sure Guardian. No power of evil shall smite thee. "The Lord shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in, from this time forth and for evermore." The first of the two - the evil to which they were liable; the second - their sure, safe, and secure refuge - that for ever.

We thus learn from this beautiful Psalm that, trusting in the LORD, and looking to Him for our help, we shall find, He will keep us from all danger; His care will be unceasing; His help is always available; He will keep us at all seasons; He will keep us from all evil; He will keep us in all circumstances; He will keep us through all time for evermore. Oh keep my soul, then, Jesus Abiding still with Thee, And if I wander, teach me Soon back to Thee to flee.

God can deliver from trouble His people who trust Him; He can cover them in the day of battle, and preserve them from the terror by night; and He will do these things for them when it is for their greatest good that He should; so that they may always commend themselves and all that are theirs to His wise and tender mercies. Yet the Christian ought not to hope to escape the sorrow and suffering through which others are passing; it would be unwarrantable selfishness and sheer weakness to expect to do so. The sword is as likely to bereave the Christian home of a beloved son as any other, and the house that is sanctified by prayer has no immunity from the bomb that falleth in the darkness, except, as we have said, God sees that their preservation from these things will be for their greatest good. Then what advantage has the Christian over the one who knows not God? His advantage lies in the fact that he knows God—God behind the sorrow, God over it, God in it, and God abiding in all His infinite wisdom and love when the sorrow is past and gone. And faith in God—who is not only the Almighty but the God of all comfort—lifts the Christian out of all depression and enables him, instead of attempting to escape sorrow, to share the sorrows of others, and to suffer instead of them if needs be. With this knowledge the Christian is the man to brighten the corner in which he is set and to convey hope and comfort to the despairing and distressed.

The wicked being allowed to persecute, without the power of God being presently exercised against the persecutors, led Paul to say by the Holy Ghost, "If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable." But does not God really watch over and protect His saints? Yea, truly, and the church's pathway through the world is both for the glory of God and for the brighter shining of His saints when the glory comes. Saints are conscious of God's care and love, and know that during this present dispensation it is not so much by delivering them from the sorrows and trials of life, as by maintaining their faith and bringing them triumphantly through all. "My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations [not temptations to sin] , knowing this, that the trying of your faith works patience" (see James 1:3-4 & 13-14). This is not mere resting upon God during the trial, but joy because the trial is sent. This is one of faith's victories, whose eye is fixed not on present suffering but on God's glory in it. "That the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perishes, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honour and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ" (1 Peter 1:7). Many instances of God's special interposition might be adduced, but the general and normal aspect of this dispensation is that the saints of God have to suffer, whatever a Christ-rejecting world may do. So it appears that the seed grows up "he knows not how." But faith goes beyond the appearance, trusting and confiding in God.