How is God our refuge?
God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble — three claims packed into one line, and the psalm places them against a world where the earth itself gives way. The questions worth asking are what kind of help this is, who can say "our," and what we must do to actually find it.
"Our" — the Small Word That Changes Everything
The verse does not simply say that a refuge exists somewhere. It says whose it is, and one commentator presses on that pronoun.
Hamilton SmithWe 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."
What a Refuge Is
A refuge is not an idea to admire. It is somewhere you run, and running there means you have admitted the danger.
The Bible TreasuryA 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.
The "city of refuge" was a town in Israel where someone who had killed a person accidentally could flee and be safe from the relative who came to avenge the death.
Help In the Trouble, Not Only Out of It
Refuge does not always mean escape. The same writer draws out how God's help usually reaches us, and why the harder form of it is the better one.
The Bible TreasuryHe does not always deliver us out of our troubles, but sustains us in them, and carries us through them, which is far better... 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 of their beloved one for ever, that the Lord stepped in and showed them Himself as they had never known Him before.
Either outcome brings something, as another writer puts it — and the discovery may cost us every other support first.
H. H. SnellIf God is our refuge, we shall find either that He will give us deliverance from the trouble, or help in the trouble; but blessing it will be, present blessing, in some way or other. It may be painful to find every other refuge fail us, all other streams dry, every cistern broken, and lover and friend stand aloof; but with God really as our refuge, we shall find Him our strength and a very present help.
A Refuge Measured Against the Worst
The psalm's opening word is God, and everything that follows is measured against Him. Commentators read verses 2 and 3 as describing a coming time of extreme distress for God's people Israel, and one writer answers the psalm's own imagery with two questions.
A. J. PollockThis will be the confidence of the sorely tried remnant of Israel in a future day, when circumstances will be enough to make the bravest heart tremble. 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?
How the Help Is Received
Verse 1 does not stand alone. The psalm later says "Be still, and know that I am God," and that is treated as the condition for laying hold of verse 1.
Hamilton SmithTwo truths of great practical importance, for believers of every period, are brought before us in Psalm 46. Faced with the upheavals and conflicts of a godless world, we are reminded first that God is "a very present help in trouble." Second, in order to realise and obtain the present help of God, our part is to "be still" and know that God is God. Only faith can enter into these truths. Flesh can lean on an arm of flesh; but flesh can neither trust in God nor "be still" and wait for God to act.
The reverse is equally blunt:
J. N. Darby"God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble." … Human efforts shut this help out. … No human planning is ever right. In His own time and way, God will come in.
The Danger of Stopping Here
One caution runs against the grain of how the verse is often used. Take it as the whole of your relationship with God, and something is lost.
J. N. DarbyIf my mind is fixed on present circumstances and present difficulties, and on God's helping me in them, there will not be the same spring of joy. For then I make God simply the servant of my necessities. The heart rests and centres there, and God sinks down into a mere help in time of trouble. It is quite true that "God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in time of trouble"; but to bring Him down to be only this changes the whole aspect of things. Himself, as our portion, is infallibly ours.
Summary
- Refuge. A refuge is a place you flee to from real danger — Christ is the true city of refuge, and the flight begins with admitting you are in peril.
- Ours. The world has its protectors; the little word "our" makes this refuge the believer's own possession, not a general truth about God.
- Present. More exactly, "a help in distresses very readily found" — never late, and closer than the trouble.
- Stillness. The help is obtained by being still and knowing that God is God; human planning and effort shut it out.
- Himself. He may deliver us from trouble or carry us through it, but the greater gift is God Himself as our portion — not merely a helper hired by our needs.