Episode description
Episode description
Unshakeable
The acorns are falling this time of year where I live, and we are experiencing an abundant crop. These little round objects often accumulate in places making walking there treacherous, like walking on ice. We have to choose our steps wisely, and we must clean away the acorns that are creating a fall hazard.
This world is being shaken, but are we? As followers of Christ, we shouldn’t be.
Psalm 55:22 tells us that God will never let the righteous be shaken.
And these are the words of Kind David, a man who knew a thing or two about turmoil, grief, and being shaken.
The complete verse says, “Cast your burden on the Lord and He will sustain you; He will never allow the righteous to be shaken.”
According to Psalm 40:2 we’ve been given a firm place to stand, and God is our solid rock. But we are living in a period of time when it is easy to totter over the edge of the firm place and topple into the shaking.
In spiritual terms, we are walking in a world covered in the metaphorical acorns of misinformation, deceit, too much news and too many lies, false images created to mislead on purpose. And when we do find the real news, the truth, it is often too horrible to bear. If we aren’t on guard, we can easily slip on these “acorns.” But do we have to Joe?
God’s Word exists so we don’t have to, though. So let’s take a little quiz.
When was the nation of Israel first mentioned in historical texts?
“Israel” first appears near the end of the 13th century BC within the Egyptian Merneptah Stele, referring apparently to a people (rather than a place) inhabiting what was then “Canaan.” A few centuries later in that region, we find two sister kingdoms: Israel and Judah (the origin of the term “Jew”)
God promised this land to the Israelites, but even if someone chooses not to believe the Bible, there is historical evidence of the people who lived in the region and when. So the land really has been known as Israel and Judah historically.
In AD 135, following a failed Jewish revolt, Roman Emperor Hadrian expelled the Jews from Jerusalem and decreed that the city and surrounding territory be part of a larger entity called “Syria-Palestina.” “Palestina” took its name from the coastal territory of the ancient Philistines, enemies of the Israelites (ancestors of the Jews).
During the reign of Rameses III (1186-1155BC) Egyptian history speaks of an attempted invasion by “sea people.” Historical evidence indicates some of these people settled in the land of Canaan and that some of these people were the group that came to be known as Philistines. Their pottery and other artifacts suggest that they originally came from Greece and Asia Minor.
Israel was mentioned as the inhabitants of this land several centuries before the Philistines who became known as Palestinians thanks to a conquering Roman Emperor in AD 135.
Why does knowing this matter?
Because we are being bombarded with all sorts of in accuracies that are design and propagated to play on our sympathies or at least make us less confident about what the Bible tells us is true. So when we are reading the news and watching the protests against Israel, if we know the truth we can stand against the lies. We can remain unshaken. 1948 wasn’t the beginning of Israel.
(We can’t encourage you enough to listen to the sermon from Pastor Gary Hamrick of Cornerstone Chapel Leesburg that I’ll share in the show notes. He does a brilliant job of breaking it all down and he has maps.)
As for the border fence that some are claiming exists for the purpose of oppression, I can remember back in the 1980s and 90s hearing of terrorist attacks against Israel. The fence was built in 1994 in response to the ongoing threat.
(Here’s a note for our American listeners… we can’t rewrite history and hope to understand the present)
Truth is what we have to rely on.
And what is the ultimate source of truth? The Bible—God’s Word.
In this verse from Psalm 55, He instructs us to cast our burden upon Him. Translated this means to throw or fling our care and anxiety upon Him. The word upon implies to throw with a duty being imposed upon a person. Basically, when we cast our cares upon the Lord, he doesn’t just toss them into a basket with all the other cares. He accepts a duty to receive and handle them.
In the financial industry there is a term called “fiduciary responsibility.” It means that one party is legally responsible to act in the best interest of the other party. When we allow someone to have a fiduciary responsibility over our finances, we are trusting them to sustain us.
This is what God does with our cares when we give them to Him. He will act in our best interest to sustain us or to nourish us.
Of course, this requires our righteousness, which none of us possess aside from the finished work of Christ on the cross. Christ’s righteousness has been imputed to us through the shedding of His blood, but only if we accept it.
We cannot deny the gift of God’s salvation and still receive the privilege of casting our cares on Him.
Have you ever received a piece of mail marked “return to sender, address unknown”?
In John 17:12 Jesus says, “I have guarded them, and not one has been lost except the son of destruction . . .” The son of destruction was Judas Iscariot, a man who knew and experienced a closeness with God but refused to accept His gift of salvation. Judas chose to believe he could pay his own debt instead of stepping beneath the covering of Christ’s gift of imparted righteousness, His gift of salvation. And Judas did pay a price, but it was far short of the debt he owed.
The rest of the disciples went on to experience the shaking of a cruel and wicked world. Yet none of them were lost. The world could not dislodge them. Christ did not let them fall.
We can stand against the hatred, the chaos, the sorrow and confusion in a world that is being violently shaken. That unshakeable faith is available to us as well.
First, we must admit we can never repay the debt we owe. We can never be truly righteous on our own. And once we admit this, we must accept the gift of salvation that comes through faith in Christ alone.
Then we are eligible to cast our cares—to throw our burdens—upon the Lord in faith that are received by Him as a duty, a holy obligation that makes them His responsibility. Once again, we trust Him to sustain us like one with a fiduciary responsibility.
With our cares turned over to God, we live in the peace of knowing we can’t be shaken. No matter how violently the earth moves or how wicked the world becomes, He will never allow us to be shaken.
So what do we do now?
We make sure that we have surrendered our lives to Christ and His salvation. Then we turn off the news and read our Bibles.
Scripture:
Psalm 55:22
John 17:12
References:
https://www.historyofinformation.com/detail.php?id=1561
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