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the secret place

 

psalm 91

 

 

Guest Minister

Upper Room Christian Fellowship

 

hat a delight it is for me to be here today.  I want to thank you on behalf of my wife and my granddaughter and also the Upper Room Christian Fellowship for your warm welcome.  I really appreciate that and we want to bless you and thank the Lord for you.   I was so moved by the choir.  Choir, bless you!  That song [“On Eagle’s Wings”] so speaks of what I want to share with you this morning.  You know, Covenant has had a special place in our hearts and many of the people at the Upper Room.  Obviously, we know many of you, but more than that it goes back many years to the early 70s when there was a movement of God on the Purdue campus among the faculty and graduate students particularly.  And as God was moving in the hearts of many of us— that is how the Upper Room actually got started, through a kind of revival—there was a men’s prayer group from Covenant—this group, I understand, is still going today—and this prayer group was a special encouragement to us.  We would go there on Thursday mornings to be very refreshed and encouraged and they would give us wisdom—these were godly men, and we were so thankful for them.  I thank the Lord that, although some of them have passed away, those who are there are still very, very faithful to the Lord.  It was a wonderful time; I thank you and Covenant for the ministry that they have been to us.  I also thank the Lord for your pastor and the pastoral staff, he’s a wonderful man and I thank the Lord for his articulation.  The pastors of TEAM, whenever we have a difficult letter that needs to be written for the paper or whatever, we seek out David because he knows how to write them in such a way everyone can understand and is very clear, so we thank the Lord for him.  Also, we’re so grateful that Ron Hawkins could be at our fellowship today.  I just appreciate your kindness to us.  I see in your congregation so many of the faculty or former faculty from the University; I thought I was back in the classroom and have some of those same sensations of what am I before here!  So I do thank the Lord for you.

 

This morning I want to go to Psalm ninety-one. 

 

This is a marvelous Scripture that has special meaning for me, not only for some of things I’ve gone through, but also because of the continuing reality of what this Psalm talks about.  Let me read it and you can follow:

 

PSALM 91

Safety of Abiding in the Presence of God

¹     He ^awho dwells in the secret place of the Most High

     Shall abide ^bunder the shadow of the Almighty.

²     ^cI will say of the Lord, “He is my refuge and my fortress;

     My God, in Him I will trust.”

³     Surely ^dHe shall deliver you from the snare of the ¹fowler

     And from the perilous pestilence.

⁴     ^eHe shall cover you with His feathers,

     And under His wings you shall take refuge;

     His truth shall be your shield and ²buckler.

⁵     ^fYou shall not be afraid of the terror by night,

     Nor of the arrow that flies by day,

⁶     Nor of the pestilence that walks in darkness,

     Nor of the destruction that lays waste at noonday.

⁷     A thousand may fall at your side,

     And ten thousand at your right hand;

     But it shall not come near you.

⁸     Only ^gwith your eyes shall you look,

     And see the reward of the wicked.

⁹     Because you have made the Lord, who is ^hmy refuge,

     Even the Most High, ⁱyour dwelling place,

¹⁰     ^jNo evil shall befall you,

     Nor shall any plague come near your dwelling;

¹¹     ^kFor He shall give His angels charge over you,

     To keep you in all your ways.

¹²     In their hands they shall ³bear you up,

     ^lLest you ⁴dash your foot against a stone.

¹³     You shall tread upon the lion and the cobra,

     The young lion and the serpent you shall trample underfoot.

¹⁴     “Because he has set his love upon Me, therefore I will deliver him;

     I will ⁵set him on high, because he has ^mknown My name.

¹⁵     He shall ⁿcall upon Me, and I will answer him;

     I will be ^owith him in trouble;

     I will deliver him and honor him.

¹⁶     With ⁶long life I will satisfy him,

     And show him My salvation.”^[1]

 

You know, our society—and all of us are aware of this—has a lot of pressures that come to bear on us.  We look at our election and we feel pressured.  We look at terrorism and we have pressure.  We look at the moral decay and we feel pressure.  We are concerned and we say, “What about our children?”  The young people wonder, “What about my future?”  And many of us have personal things that would war against us. 

 

The Psalmist is telling us here that there is a secret place; there is a quiet place; a special place of security.  God has provided that special place and He made it available through his precious Son.  The Lord Jesus came as a man and He died on the cross and He broke the power of sin that separates us from the Father.  He shed his blood and washed away our sins; He was buried; He rose again from the dead, breaking the power of death; He ascended to Heaven and sits at the right hand of God the Father; and He sent his Holy Spirit to enable us to come to know Jesus so that we could come into that secret place that He has for us.

 

Wonderful thing:  this secret place is a very special place.  It’s not just a casual thing.  It’s a place where we come when we yield our heart to the Lord and we say, “We love You, Lord Jesus.”  We come into fellowship and communion with Him; and He begins to speak to us; and He begins to let us know of his love and his care and how He wants to lead us.  I thank the Lord for that!  You know, this has become so very real to me because about three or four years ago I had a bout with cancer, colon cancer.  I was on the operating table and they had just taken out a third of my colon and they were letting the anesthesia wear off and were waiting to see if I would regain consciousness and if I would breathe normally; and if I was breathing normally, they would give me a shot so that I would have no more pain.  But I regained consciousness more quickly than they anticipated.  I was lying there, and if you know what a hospital room is like, it’s very cold!  I was shaking and shivering and suddenly I felt this terrible pain in my abdomen.  I said, “Lord, I don’t think I can handle this.”  I reached my heart up and I said, “Oh, Lord Jesus, I love You!  I know you are there.  Would You care for me, would You help me.”  And almost that very instant He brought to my mind the fact of all the people around the world who were praying for me, including the people of Covenant.  I want to tell you how much I thank you for that!  Not only that, but He brought a peace to my heart and He was just letting me know that it was going to be all right.  I knew at that point that I was touching the secret place of the Most High—a very special place.  I’ve been there many times and, of course, I want to walk there.  It’s a place of dwelling, a place of living, in which I want to live.  The Psalmist speaks of this place as a special place, a secret place, a place protection, and a place against the mental onslaughts and the war of the enemy, Satan himself, who wants to come and attack our minds.  It is also a place of physical protection.

 

In the initial verses the Psalmist gives us five word pictures.   Let me review those for you and we will go on from there.

 

The first one is:  When we are in the secret place of the Most High, we shall be under the shadow of the Almighty.  The picture is that of a very hot summer day.  You are overwhelmed with the heat and you come into the shade of a tree and you feel that refreshing shade of the tree.  That is what the secret place is like.  We have in our lives and in our society and in the world around us many pressures; there are tensions; there are personal things—criticisms, accusations—all of these types of things that are in our lives.  But when we can come into the presence of the Lord, when we can come into that secret place, we can feel that refreshing presence of God himself.

 

The second thing he says is this:  He will be my refuge and my fortress—my refuge and my fortress. In the secret place I personally can come to know that He is my God.  I can trust Him.  Then I recognize that there is hiding place, a place of security.  I’ve been there!  I know that it is true!  Not only that, it is a fortress against the enemy.

 

The third thing that he says is:  When we come into the secret place, it allows us to be delivered from the snare of the fowler—they sang that this morning—the trap of bird catcher.  Sometimes our soul, particularly in the Book of Psalms, is talked about as a bird.  The bird trapper is Satan himself.  He is pounding you and he is looking for an opportunity to trap you or to snare you.  That is way this secret place, in this secret place where Satan cannot be, is where God himself will give you the wisdom to know how to avoid the snare and the trap that the enemy is setting for you.

 

A fourth thing is this:  He will cover you with his feathers and under his wings you shall have refuge. Beautiful picture!  This is a picture of a mother hen, and if any of you have come from the farm you know what a brooding hen or a hen that has chicks will do.  She will fight anything, much bigger than she, to protect her chicks.  God has a heart like that.  He wants to protect us.  It reminds me of a story that I heard recently.  Several years ago, you may remember, that in Yellowstone Park there was a horrific fire went through there, burned the whole thing or a large portion of it.  The day after the fire a ranger was going through the area to assess the damage.  As he was going in he saw this bird that looked like a stature.  It’s wing feathers had all been burned off.  It was just like a statue. So he took a stick and poked it and when it fell over out ran three little chicks!  That bird was not about to leave the chicks.  It could have flown away but it wouldn’t do it.  God in Heaven, our precious Father, says, “Yes, the enemy has attacked; but I’m not going to leave you.  He sent the Lord Jesus to be our security, to be our refuge and to be a place where we can hide under his wings.  What a tremendous thing for us!

 

The fifth thing he says is this:  His truth shall be your shield and buckler—his truth.  When we are in that secret place with God He gives us a revelation, often times a revelation of himself; and that word becomes so real it is like a shield.  A shield covers much of us and we can hold it against the enemy, or a buckler—a buckler is one of those little round shields that comes on your arm so that when the enemy has a specific attack you can move that thing around.  The Word of God coming into your heart and being a defense against the warfare of the enemy—it’s there, it’s very real.

 

Then we go on to verse five.

 

It says, “When these things are true, when we are in that secret place and these things are real, you shall not be afraid of the terror by night.”  What is the “terror by night”?  Some of you may be too young to know that sometimes when we are older, sometimes about two o’clock in the morning, we can’t sleep.  A thought comes from the enemy, and it begins to terrorize us and to war against us and it magnifies the thing and you can’t sleep and it’s horrible because but don’t have to be there.  You can go into that secret place and say, “Lord Jesus, I love You.  Come to my rescue.  Let me see this as You see it.”  And He will be a protection against that terror by night. 

 

And it goes on and says, “Nor the arrow that flies by day.”  That comment, that thought that the enemy wants to bring, or someone is accusing you, and suddenly you feel attacked.  You can go to the secret place and God can give you grace.

 

“Nor the pestilence that walks in darkness.”  The “pestilence that walks in darkness,” some of the commentators believe to be like a moral decay, a slipping away from God, a walking away from God—something that comes over you and you tend to move away, like a disease that is coming on.  But when you are in the secret place, when you are in that place with God, it will prevent that from happening to you.  It will prevent the enemy from taking advantage.

 

Then he goes on and says, “A thousand may fall at your side and ten thousand at your right hand, but it shall not come near you.  Only with your eyes shall you look and see the punishment of the wicked.”  When you are in the secret place, there may be people around you who are falling prey to moral decay or whatever the case may be, and in our society it’s very rampant, but you don’t have to. You can stay in that secret place and all you will do is to see the effect of that moral decay and what it’s doing to the life a person, but you don’t have to be there.  All you do is see it.  You are free.  Your can be free in that place.

 

Then he goes on in verse nine, a very beautiful Scripture:  “Because you have made the Lord, who is your refuge, even the Most High, your dwelling place, there is protection.”  What he is saying to us has to do with the importance of our making Jesus Christ our refuge, because He wants to take us to that special place, that secret place, in the Father.

 

Let me share with you a story with you that may help to make this clear. 

 

Lowell Thomas, a number of years ago, told this story on the radio.  It was about a couple in North Dakota, in the middle of the winter—it was Christmas Eve, as a matter of fact.  The wife had taken the children and gone to a service at the Church, a Christmas Eve service.  She was a godly woman; but her husband wasn’t so sure.  He didn’t know about God, and he just couldn’t understand why Jesus had to come; why did Jesus have to die?  It didn’t make any sense to him and so he really wasn’t sure he wanted anything to do with it.  While his wife was gone, a storm blew up—a winter storm: heavy snow, heavy wind.  And as he was sitting in the living room, lo and behold, BOOM! Something hit the bay window.  And then again.  And then again. And then again.  He got up and wondered what in the world this could be.  When he went outside to check he noticed that it was a flock of snow geese that had obviously lost their way in the storm and were attracted to the light at the window, and as they came, they ran right into it.  They were injured, they were hurt, some of them bleeding.  So he tried to go over to help them but they would run away.  He opened the barn door thinking that if they had any sense they would go into the place of protection.  They wouldn’t go.  He tried to shoo them in.  They wouldn’t go in.  He put some food out, hoping at least they could eat and maybe be drawn into the barn by the food.  They wouldn’t.  As he sat there, he had empathy for these poor geese.  He thought, “If only I were a goose, I could lead them into the barn.”  And then it hit him!  God gave him a revelation.  That’s what Jesus did.  He came to rescue me; He came to rescue me and take me into the barn.  By his death and resurrection, He came as a man and He came to take us to that secret place of the Most High.  He wanted to bring us into that place of protection.  He fell on his knees and asked the Lord’s forgiveness for what he was doing.

 

Let’s now read verse nine again:

 

⁹     Because you have made the Lord, who is ^hmy refuge,

     Even the Most High, ⁱyour dwelling place,

¹⁰     ^jNo evil shall befall you,

     Nor shall any plague come near your dwelling;

 

Powerful thing!  Powerful truth!  That means it can protect your mind and your emotions; it can protect you physically.  That secret place with Jesus.

 

Charles Spurgeon, in 1854, had nearly come to the end of himself.  There was an Asiatic Cholera that was sweeping through London.  People were sick, many people dying.  He was having funerals every day.  He was having to go to homes of people who were dying and had to share with them how to know Christ and how to be prepared for eternity.  He was getting so weary that fear was creeping in.  If I keep doing this, I’m going to get this disease.  And one day, as he was walking home, he went by a shoemaker’s shop and the shoemaker had put in his window these Scriptures:

 

Because you have made the Lord, who is your refuge, even the Most High, your dwelling place, no evil shall befall you nor shall any plague come near your dwelling. 

And he said, “Yes, that’s true!”  And he reached his heart up to the Lord and fear left and he was encouraged and strengthened and he continued to minister through that thing—he never got cholera, and he was able to minister with great strength.  Why?  Because he knew the secret place; because God could speak to him, even as he was walking along, through the word of another.

 

Then the Scripture goes on to say:  “For He shall give his angels charge over you.”

 

Stop and think of it!

 

If we’re in that secret place of the Most High, he sends his angels!  You may not see them; but they are around.  And it makes it very difficult for the angels when we’re not in that secret place of the Most High.  It makes it very difficult for them.  But they do it so that you don’t stub your toe or whatever the case may be. 

 

And he goes on, but I want to read particularly verse fourteen through sixteen:

 

¹⁴     “Because he has set his love upon Me, therefore I will deliver him;

     I will ⁵set him on high, because he has ^mknown My name.

¹⁵     He shall ⁿcall upon Me, and I will answer him;

     I will be ^owith him in trouble;

     I will deliver him and honor him.

¹⁶     With ⁶long life I will satisfy him,

     And show him My salvation.”^[2]

 

Marvelous!!

 

I want to tell you a story this morning about a young lad, actually only about five or six years old.  This young man came to know the secret place of the Most High in a fairly unusual way.  The story was told to me by one of our missionaries, Jeff Romack, who is head of Youth with a Mission in Cambodia.  As I read through this, just listen for several things:  first, I want you to be aware of the power of Jesus to take us to that special place in Him, the special, the secret place.  Secondly, to listen to how God can give power and peace in the midst of even a very difficult situation.  And finally, listen for the sovereign grace of a loving God who can save a little boy and prepare him in a short life, not only to have peace, even in his death, but also to prepare him for eternity.  This story is about a little boy from Cambodia.  His name was Sokia Thompson.

 

Sokia had a Khmer mother and an American father.  His American father was teaching English in Cambodia when he married Sokia’s mother.  The unfortunate thing was that both Sokia’s father and mother were HIV positive.  His mother had been a prostitute because there was no other means for her to make a living and her family was extremely poor.  So it was a year and half after Sokia was born that his mother died.  There was political turmoil in Cambodia so his father had to leave and go to Indonesia where he worked for three and half years to make enough money and to get the papers straightened out so that he could come back and take Sokia from Cambodia into, at that time, Indonesia. 

 

Sokia was then left with his grandmother; she lived about fifty miles from Phnom Phen.  She was very poor; she did not even have a door on her house.  Sokia and his father were in Indonesia a very short period of time and Sokia’s father died from AIDS.  But before he had died, he called his brother in Michigan and asked him to come to get Sokia and take him to the States as part of his family, which he did.  So Sokia was now near Kalamazoo, Michigan, in a family.  But it wasn’t very long before the doctors discovered that Sokia was also HIV positive.  The family was deeply concerned because they had a young baby and they decided that they could not continue to have Sokia live in their home and they put him up as a ward of the state.  The state had difficulty in finding someone to take him because he was HIV positive.  Finally, a Christian couple took him.  Think of this little boy.  He knew four words of English, his parents had both died, he was in a country that he didn’t know, and he was taken out of a home that he had hoped would be a loving home.

 

But God! 

 

Sokia came into this home of a Christian family.  Their names were Dan and Debbie Calvert. When he came into this family they immediately began teaching him English and he learned very quickly.  They also began to teach him the Gospel and told him about Jesus.  It was like an electric shock.  He just so quickly absorbed it.  He wanted Jesus; and he wanted more of Jesus.  He understood the Scriptures and asked questions of greater depth than many adults—he just learned about Jesus and wanted to know more.  He became something of a little evangelist.  But it wasn’t very long before the doctors discovered that he also had lymphoma because of his weakened immune situation.  So they gave him three rounds of chemotherapy and a round of radiation.  All the while he was in the hospital everyone knew that little Sokia loved the Lord.  He was a radiance of the glory of God.  He was just such a fresh breath of air and everybody liked being around him.  While he was in the hospital, someone told his mother about the Make-a-Wish program that helps children who are terminally ill to have their last real wish.  Usually, they go to Disney World or something like that. Sokia had another idea in mind.  He had two consuming desires: one was that he could put a door on his grandmother’s house—this is a six-year-old boy—and tell his grandmother about Jesus.  These were consuming.  So when Make-a-Wish chose him, they talked to him and thought he would say Disney World, but he said, “No, I want to put a door on my grandmother’s house and I want to tell her about Jesus.”  They didn’t know how to handle it.  They had never had a terminally ill child go out of the country, at least not to a third-world country.  So they thought maybe he was influenced by his foster parents who happened to be Christians.  So they took him in a room by himself and told him about Disney World and how wonderful it was.  And then they asked him again, “What would be your last wish?”  He said, “I want to put a door on my grandmother’s house and tell her about Jesus.”  Finally, not knowing what else to do, they decided maybe they should go through with it, and they decided that the foster parents should go with him.  So the foster parents and Sokia contacted Jeff Romack and came to Cambodia.  The whole base was praying earnestly because there was a major problem.  Sokia couldn’t remember where his grandmother lived and they didn’t know how they were going to find her.  So it was a potentially tragic situation.  They were getting discouraged. Then God sent some divine intervention and through a miraculous work of God they were able to have his story told on national television in Cambodia.  Someone in his grandmother’s village saw the program and told the grandmother and she sent her son and a cousin to pick up Sokia. So Sokia, his foster parents, and a number of the Khmer students who were learning at the Youth with a Mission base went with them to the grandmother’s house.  They put the door on the house and Sokia told his grandmother about Jesus.  The Khmer students were so absolutely overwhelmed by the faith and confidence of this little boy that they set up a mission in the grandmother’s village and many of them have come to the Lord.

 

About ten days later, after they came back—they were home about two weeks—the cancer that was in Sokia took a devastating turn and he had to be returned to the hospital.  While he was in the hospital in Ann Arbor, Michigan, everyone in the hospital knew Sokia—they knew his story.  Why? Because he had known how to come into that secret place with God and it was not unusual to see this little boy, bald head because of the treatments, sitting in his wheelchair praising the Lord, singing praise to the Lord and talking with Jesus.  Even up to a week before he died, he was in great pain, and yet you would see Sokia with his hands raised, praising God, absolutely at peace.

 

He died about six months ago.  And about five months ago, I received a large check in the mail from the church that had the funeral for Sokia.  Before Sokia died, he had one more wish and that was that someone would send Bibles to his grandmother’s village.  So they took an offering at the funeral. Two thousand dollars!  I sent the check on to Jeff.  Grandmother’s village now has Bibles!

 

Here is this little boy who knew the secret place of the Most High.  He knew the secret place where God dwells and God, working in his heart, gave him peace even in the midst of the situation; but it also prepared him for eternity.

 

You say, “Well, why wasn’t he healed?”  I don’t know why.  But I think God was walking through the garden and He picked this flower for himself, a very special child.

 

Our society has many pressures and many of you are going through pressures, exceeding pressures, and you need to know the secret place of the Most High.  The way we come into the secret place of the Most High is through Jesus Christ, and I tell you, from experience and from what I’ve seen in others, that we can come into that secret place and have the things that are described in this Psalm, so clear and so abundant that can be ours and prepare us for eternity.  It will bless us here but it will also bless us in eternity.  I believe that God wants that for all of us.

 

May we pray.

 

Father, how gracious and kind and loving You are!  I thank You, Lord, for the secret place that You have allowed me to understand and come into.  I thank You, Lord, for the secret place that You want to have many, in fact all of us, come into.  We thank You for the Lord Jesus and the way You have given us the opportunity to come into that secret place with Him.  Oh, Lord Jesus, I pray for my brothers and sisters this morning.  I ask You, Lord, to reach into their hearts.  I pray that You would touch them in a very special way.  And I pray, Lord, that You would take them into that secret place of the Most High, that they would experience your covering, that they would experience your protection, that they would experience your love, and that You would prepare them for eternity whatever may come.  And I pray, Lord, that by coming into this very special place with You, they may be able to be a light and an encouragement and a blessing to many others.  So we commit this to You, Lord, and we say, “Thank You for your grace and goodness to us.”  In Jesus’ mighty name.

Amen.