Dean Sieberhagen, Interim Dean of the Roy J. Fish School of Evangelism and Missions, Director of the World Missions Center, Professor of Missions, and Charles F. Stanley Chair for the Advancement of Global Christianity at Southwestern Seminary, preached from Psalm 91 in SWBTS Chapel on October 17, 2024.
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It’s not long, if you talk to missionaries who have been any time on the mission field that they’ll tell you that they end up in a circumstance and come out of it saying, how did that happen? How did we make it through that? We should have been in big trouble, and somehow, we made it through a number of those situations happened for me, the first real big one I’d been on. The mission field for three months, so I didn’t have much language or culture yet. And another missionary who’d been there one year, he and I had to go to a neighboring country for a meeting, so we got on a bus, caught it to the border. He was mostly the translator getting us through. We caught another bus from the border to this capital city in those countries, busses are a big mode of transportation, so the bus stations are huge.
So, we arrive at this big bus station, and as we get off the bus, these two men come up to us, wearing leather jackets and dark glasses, and they flash these badges to us, and they say, you need to come with us. And I mean, I can’t read the writing. I don’t know what they’re saying. I’m looking at my friend, and he says, we have to go with these guys. Okay, so we’ve got our backpacks. We’re only going to be there two days. We’ve got our backpacks, we follow them, and they take us downstairs to a basement in this train station. And as we walked into that room in the basement, I felt like I’d walked onto a movie set. Here in the middle of the room was one bare light bulb over a table, and they tell us to put our backpacks on the table and to strip down to our underwear and put all our clothes and shoes on this table.
I’m thinking what we’ve only just arrived here. It was also November, November in Central Asia. It has begun snowing, so we are standing there, and we take off our clothes down to our undergarments, and we put it all on this table, and we’re freezing cold, and my eyes are adjusting to the light, and eventually, in the shadows, I see in the four corners of the room four military guys standing with AK-47 rifles. What? What did we get ourselves into? So, they begin to intimidate us, and they begin to ask us that we have to give them our passports. We have to give them our wallets. They take out everything we have in our wallet. And if you know, if you haven’t been a missionary long. In those cases, you know that you always travel with $100 bill, because you always might need something to get you out of a situation. They took that $100 bill, they looked at it in that bulb, and we’re standing there freezing cold, and I don’t know how to explain it, but I had, I had a peace in my heart that passes understanding. I stood there thinking, I can’t understand this language. I don’t know what they think we’ve done. I’m freezing cold standing in this room. They’re guys pointing rifles at me, but somehow, I know everything’s going to be okay, somehow, I know I’m protected.
So, we sat, we listened. Eventually, I said to my friend, I said, you know, they’ve asked for all our identification and stuff. I said, I’d like to see their identification again. Can you ask them to show us those badges that they showed us? Because I’d like to know who these guys really are. So, he translates to them. They look at each other, they look at us, they throw our stuff back at us, and they say, get dressed. So, we get back dressed again. By this time, I can’t feel my feet anymore. We get dressed, they Paolo, I step in our backpack, and then March us up the stairs, and they say, all right, go. And we walk away, thinking, what’s just happened? How did we? How did we get through this situation and as a missionary that plays itself over and over and over all around the world, and Psalm 91 is the answer to that situation. And Psalm 91 is a psalm for missionaries to read over and over and over again, but actually not just missionaries. If you going to be in ministry for the Lord Jesus Christ, you better hold on to Psalm 91 in fact, if you going to just be serious about your Christian walk with Christ, and not just us who minister, but the people in our churches, you better hold on to Psalm 91 because those situations will come.
And every time you hold on to it, and every time you realize this is the reason God carried me through, then you’re more prepared for the next time and the next time and the next time, and your faith builds up. And I. Can tell you stories of the end of our time on missions, on the mission field, when these things happened, and we said, this is going to have to be a God thing. We have no human way out of this. It’s got to be a God thing. But you know what? We saw a God thing there, and we saw a God thing there, all based on what we learn in Psalm 91 so let’s read it together and see how we should live. Psalm 91 the one who lives under the protection of the Most High, dwells in the shadow of the Almighty, I will say concerning the Lord who is my refuge and my fortress, my God in whom I trust. He Himself will rescue you from the bird trap, from the destructive plague. He will cover you with his feathers. You will take refuge under his wings, his faithfulness will be a protective shield. You will not fear the terror of the night, the arrow that flies by day, the plague that stalks in darkness, or the pestilence that ravages at noon, though 1000 fall at your side and 10,000 at your right hand. The pestilence will not reach you. You will only see it with your eyes and witness the punishment of the wicked, because you have made the Lord My refuge, the Most High your dwelling place, no harm will come to you, no plague will come near your tent, for He will give His angels orders concerning you, to protect you in all your ways. They will support you with their hands so that you will not strike your foot against the stone you will tread on the lion and the cobra, you will trample the young lion and the serpent, because he has his heart set on me. I will deliver him. I will protect him, because he knows my name when he calls out to me, I will answer him. I will be with him in trouble. I will rescue him and give him honor. I will satisfy him with long life and show him my salvation.
Let’s return to verse one, the one who lives under, lives under in the Hebrew. That is a work Yahshua. It’s a work. It’s a word that means to dwell or to settle or to remain. You may hear echoes of that in the New Testament in John 15. This is a theme of John 15, a very deep discipleship chapter in John where he said talks about remaining in fact, John 15 four says, remain in me, and I in you, just as a branch is unable to produce fruit by itself unless it remains on the vine, neither can you unless you remain in me. This is the Hebrew the Greek word that parallels is the word meno or menu in the Greek parallels this Hebrew word Yahshua, to live under, to dwell, to remain, to settle, to make it your home. Is the word that he’s using here is very, very significant. Now thinking, I remember when I was studying preaching, and my preaching professor said, Okay, you guys figure out what does remain mean in some of our translations, it’s abide, to abide. What does that mean? How are you going to communicate that?
And it took us a while to really think it through. And I think for me, I settled on understanding this word as meaning that I spend my life what I think about, what I do. I spend my life realizing that I need God every moment of every day for me to dwell, to remain, to settle into him, is to realize every part of my life is completely dependent on God, and I need to live in that understanding of my perspective of my life, not just when I need something, Not just when I’m in a dungeon and people are intimidating me, but every moment in the valleys and on the mountains, am I dwelling? Am I abiding in such a way that I realize that my life is totally dependent on God, completely dependent? Depended on him.
Well, if this is true, if you live like that, what does this psalm go on to say about you? And the key phrase for this psalm is the next, the next words that he uses the one who lives under the protection of the Most High. If you want a title for the psalm, there it is the protection of the Most High. So, what is it to to orient my life, to spend my life under that, to live under that. And the very first thing that I have to do if I’m going to do that, the Psalmist is going to teach me. I must get my theology right. Who is this one that I’m going to take my entire life and put it under his protection? Who is it? And look how the psalmist explains this. He, first of all, says, dwells in the shadow of the Almighty. This shadow is a very strong picture of God and His protection. It’s found in Psalm 17, Psalm 36 where there they talk about the shadow of your wings. And in fact, even as we look further down here, you will see in verse four, he will cover you with his feathers, with a refuge of his wings.
It’s a common theme in the Psalms and elsewhere, this idea of a shadow, this idea of a of a refuge, of a fortress, of a place of safety, a place where you can feel protected. But it’s interesting, the Scripture also uses shadow in other ways. In Psalm 23 which we heard preached on before it says, even though I walk through the shadow of the valley of death, in Matthew four, quoting from the Old Testament, when Jesus begins his public ministry in Matthew chapter four, verse 16, it says he goes to those who dwell in the shadow Land of Death. So shadow, this is a very strong word picture of you either live in one shadow or the other, you’re under the shadow of his wings of his protection, or there are those who live under the shadow of death. And the Bible paints this as a very strong picture for us.
So first of all, you have to understand the shadow of the Almighty. Now, why is theology important? Because he uses, he’s going to use four different words for this one who puts his shadow over you. The first one is here, the shadow of the Almighty is this word we learn called El Shaddai. El Shaddai in the Hebrew. This is the idea of a God who is all sufficient and completely able. He is completely able to protect you with his shadow, right? I mean, if we all felt like we wanted someone to protect us, we’d say, well, I want a really strong guy to give me his shadow? Can he do it this? El Shaddai is supposed to communicate to you, the one who protects you, if you will, place yourself completely dependent on him, the one who protects you is all sufficient. He lacks nothing. There is nothing missing in his protection. The Psalmist wants you to know this. Get your theology right. Who is this God who protects you? He is El Shaddai. But it also says verse two, I will say, concerning the Lord.
This is God’s very personal name in the Hebrew is the word Yahweh, a very personal name for God. This is the one who will partake Yahweh Himself is the one who provides that shadow of overview. Will you get that right? Will you remember who he is? And then it carries on. And he says, I would say concerning the Lord Yahweh, who is my refuge and my fortress, my God. So, there he uses another word to explain about the one who protects us, my God. This is the Hebrew word, Elohim, the eternal, uncreated God, the One who is before all this, is the one who protects you. He’s not a temporary. God. Is he eternal, uncreated all time. God is the one who puts his shadow in. Over you. The psalmist is saying, don’t go into life lightly. Don’t think lightly. Don’t let this be a small God.
Well, I’m thinking of this God who I take down off the shelf when I need him to give him me a protective shadow. You’re thinking badly. The Psalmist would say, think deeply about who this God is. He is El Shaddai. He’s Yahweh, his Elohim. And then also he carries on and says, He is the God Most High. He’s the God Most High, the word el Yoon, the supreme exalted above all gods, verse one, the one who lives under the protection of the Most High. Nobody is higher than him. He is sovereign over everything on the mission field. I needed to know that when I stood in that room and those guys with badges, which they go by later, I found out they were KGB agents. Well, I felt like I had no authority in that room, but somehow the protection of God was over me. Why? Because the authority in that room was 100% under his authority, because the authority in that room was God, Most High. God, Most High boy, if you’re going to be in ministry, you better be convinced of this God, that the God you serve is above every other authority. That’s why Jesus said in the Great Commission, all authority in heaven, in the spiritual realm and on earth, has been given to me, the authority of this God, God Most High.
So, if you are going to understand God’s protection. If you’re going to go into ministry and know that you need God’s protection, you need to understand who this God is, and the psalmist is crying at you from the very beginning. Don’t take God lightly. Don’t understand him lightly. Understand the depths and the richness of who this God is. Because if you get that right, that shadow becomes so meaningful, that shadow becomes incredible, then all you want to do every day is get up and say, Lord, I want to be back inside your shadow. If it’s this God that the psalmist is describing. So, it’s a really good word for us as people going into ministry, do not forget the God who you serve. The psalmist is using four different titles for him here to remind us who this God is. If you understand that you’re able to go out and you’re able to go wherever God calls you.
One of my good friends that we saw come through this Seminary. He came through our World Christian studies PhD program. And he is Nigerian. His name is Dr Moses Audi serving in Nigeria. Really, he is someone who helps me think about my walk with God. When He graduated with our PhD, he was offered various opportunities to go and teach. If you understand much about Nigeria, you understand that the South is the very Christian part of Nigeria, and there’s a large Seminary in the South that wanted him to come to a senior position. But there’s a smaller seminary up in the north. And the north of Nigeria is Muslim, and there is a, what we would call a terrorist organization there called Boko Haram. Boko Haram, in the last 20 years, has beheaded pastors. Just attacked churches, beheaded the pastors in front they burnt down the only Bible school we had up in the north. They had to rebuild that Bible school from the ashes. Dr Audi is the President of that Bible school. He said, Dr Audi, you had this prestigious opportunity in the South. You had a safe opportunity in the south, you had opportunity in the south, where no Muslims are going to come with a sword to you at all, but you’re up in the north with at risk. Why? Why? And he will say, it’s because those people need Jesus if we take away our presence there. He was going to tell him about Jesus, but I know if we pushed him, he would say, because My God, My God is El Shaddai, My God is Yahweh, My God is Elohim. My God is Elyon. I’m there because of my God. I am under the shadow of my god. Dr Audi knows that, and because of that, he is the president of a Bible school in a very dangerous part of the world. He’s there because he’s convinced, and he knows who his God is.
Please be convinced who your God is. So, while we love theology, we want you to do systematically. I’m a miss theologist, but I want you to do systematic theology, because when you go to the mission field, I want you to be so convinced of who God is, not in a shallow way, but in the depths where you can go and explain this God to the people that you serve. And Dr, Audi is such a great practical example to me of someone who believes this. He’s just one example. There many like that. Now the psalmist also goes on to explain, you may be dwelling in the shadow of the Almighty, but while we live on this earth, there will be danger. There will be danger. Look how he explains it. He goes on verses five and six, you will not fear the terror of the night, the arrow that flies by day, the plague that stalks in darkness, or the pestilence that ravages at noon. Do you see that play between night and darkness and day and noon? Right?
This idea that the danger you face some of it you’re going to see, and some of it’s going to be unseen. You’re not going to know about it, but it’s there, seen and unseen. And I’ll tell you what, having been on the mission field, I am so thankful God didn’t show me everything. I’m so thankful he knew that I couldn’t handle some of the stuff that he was taking care of, but that danger is all around, seen and unseen. Five and six. Look at seven and eight. This is more danger on a huge level, on a calamitous level, he says, though 1000 fall at your side and 10,000 at your right hand. The pestilence will not reach you. You will only see it with your eyes and witness the punishment of the wicked. You’re going to be in places where disaster is going to happen around you right now, in Florida and parts of the East Coast, our churches, the pastors of our churches have in the middle of widespread disaster from a hurricane. Do they still live under the shadow of the Almighty?
Yes, they do, but they’re in the middle of widespread disaster. That danger is real and is there. But then there’s another level of danger that’s much more personal. Look at verses 11 through 13, for he will give his angels concerning you to protect you in all your ways. They will support you with their hands so that you will not strike your foot against the stone. You will not tread on the lion and the cobra; you will trample the young lion and the serpent. There’s a very personal protection of you. So, there’s danger that you see and you don’t see. There’s widespread danger. There’s personal danger. But from this verse is very interesting. This from this verse is quoted in the New Testament. And do you know who quotes this passage in the New Testament? It’s at the temptation of Jesus and Satan quotes this passage at Jesus. He misapplies this truth, and we can create a dangerous precedent here for something we can call protection on demand. Protection on demand, where we say, God, Okay, God, I’m a missionary, and I’ve landed in this mission field, and there’s all these dangers.
So, when I ask you, better protect me. That’s the way Satan uses it in the context of Jesus in Matthew four, verse six, he says he called his angels. He said, call on those angels. We’ve got to be very careful. The Psalmist is not saying that this great and high and mighty God is just there. It for when we ask him, and we have protection on demand. That is not what this is. That’s more what we call this prosperity kind of gospel, teaching that God’s there for me and he’s there for me to say, okay, I can handle this by myself, but if I need You, God, then you better protect me when I call on you. That’s not the way the psalmist is encouraging us, not telling us. Remember, what does abiding mean? Dwelling mean? It means that every part of my being, every moment of the day, realizes that I’m dependent on God, every part of me. So don’t misunderstand this the way that Satan misused this in the temptation of Jesus. But what the psalmist is saying, while you live in this life, expect trouble. Expect trouble. It’s going to come in all these various ways. We are not in heaven, yet there will be trouble.
So, dwell in the shadow of the Almighty. Look at how incredible the Psalmist tells us this protection is. It’s at the beginning of the Psalm and at the end of the Psalm. Look what he says in verse three, he himself will rescue verse four, he will cover you. His faithfulness will be a protective shield. Verse 14, I will deliver him. I will protect him. Verse 15, I will answer him. I will be with him in trouble. I will rescue him. I will give him honor. Verse 16, I will satisfy him with a long life. I will show him my salvation. Boy, you need to read this over and over and over again. If you think I’m in trouble, what am I going to do? Does God really protect me?
Read the psalm over and over and over and look what God says He will do for those who dwell in His shadow, under his protective wing. So, this is good news, but, but what do I do? So how do I? How do I? How do I remain and dwell under the shadow? And he gives us some very significant things of how to apply this to our lives in English, in English Bibles, the hint is when we see the word because, and then when we see the word because, that that is a hint for what he’s telling us to do. So, let’s look verse nine is the first time because you have made the Lord your dwelling place. Because you have made the Lord your dwelling place, there’s step number one. Have you done that? Or do you say, well, I did that at my moment of salvation?
No, this carries on to every moment of every day. Do you wake up every day and say, Lord, today I’m going to make you my dwelling place. Now one of the practical ways is when you get into trouble, who do you turn to first? Will show if you’ve made the Lord your dwelling place. If you turn to human solutions and solutions outside of God, then you’ve got to question whether you have made him your dwelling place. When you’re in trouble, some of you right now, walking through challenging times, have you made him your dwelling place? That’s what the psalmist to say verse nine, you have made. Make him your dwelling place.
Then he goes on verse 14, because he has set his heart on me. Set his heart on me. There’s another way, how you remain in God, how you’re under the shadow. Set your heart on God, your deepest being, your mind, your will, your emotions, all that you are. Set that on God every day, set that on him, and then call out to him. Call out to Him. Verse 15, when he calls out to me, I will answer him as your first and above all priority. Call out to him. Are you in a dangerous situation? Call out to Him every moment. Call out to Him, may God first and above all, it’s not just one step you take. It’s a life journey. It’s not like suddenly I do this, and I wasn’t doing it. All of us every day have to take these steps. We have to determine; I will make the Lord my dwelling place. I will set my heart on him, and I will call out to Him, it. Every day.
Well, Dr Dockery mentions someone who is the first name we tend to think of when we think of Psalm 91 he’s a man who really exhibited all these things we’re talking about, and is a man who inspired many, many including myself. I was in South Africa at the time and heard the story of a man called Jim Elliot, and Psalm 91 cries out about the life and story of Jim Elliot. He was born into a strong Christian family. He lived in Portland, Oregon, and his parents were very good with him and his children in bringing up in the knowledge of the Lord, that led him to decide that he wanted to go and study at Wheaton College and specifically study the Greek language, because he said there are people groups out there that don’t know Jesus and they don’t have the Bible. So, then I need to do everything I can to become a biblical scholar and take the Gospel and the Bible to these people.
It was a passion of his life. He believed in translating the Bible was very important. But one of the cool things happened to him at Wheaton that hopefully will happen to you here? He began to read biography, biographies of missionaries. While he was studying, he began to hear stories of missionaries who were doing the very thing that he was thinking about. And it just began to inspire him. And he began to get this feeling of, I want to take the gospel where it’s not yet been heard. Are there places where there’s not yet been heard? That’s where I want to take the gospel. And so, he read about Hudson Taylor, William Carey, all these others, and just began to get inspired about that. He began to write a journal about all the way he was inspired and what he said. And there’s a famous statement in one of his journals that has inspired many missionaries all over the world. And it goes like this. In his journal, Joe Elliot wrote, he is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.
Oh, thinking about Psalm 91 and that statement has inspired so many missionaries. So he graduates from Wheaton, and he discovers that there are these people in the jungles of Ecuador who have no access much to the outside. They are. There are people pretty much untouched by the outside, called the Alka, the Alka Indians. And he says, I’m going to them. The only problem is, they were known to be violent and very against anybody from the outside, trying to have anything to do with it. And so, this was a big challenge. And there were the people who said, oh, are you sure? Are you can? Can you go to the Alka and stay under the shadow? I mean, if they want to kill you, well, will they keep you under God’s shadow? Oh, you’ve got to have your theology right to understand this. Jim was convinced he knew.
So, he gets some of his friends, and they sail down to Ecuador to go and reach these Arca Indian people. He marries another lady called to meet emissions, called Elizabeth Elliot, and they go down with their friends to reach these Auca Indians. They begin to try and contact them. And one of the missionaries, Nate saint, has an airplane. And there’s a movie they made about this called they enter the spear, which they try and reenact airplane, how they try and fly in a circle, and it has a long rope, and they drop these gifts down to the Alka, things they think the Alka people will like and use as a means of saying, We’re friendly. We want to help you. So, for a couple of months, that’s all they do. They only circle and drop gifts to them. Eventually, Nate Saint finds a place along the river where there’s a long sand bar, and he figures out that he could probably land the plane on that sandbar and take off again. And so, they try it, and it works. And so, they make some initial contact with the Arca, and they think this is looking really hopeful.
And then all of a sudden, on January the eighth, 1956 German four of the other male missionaries get out of that plane. All of a sudden, people come out to meet them, but they come with spears, and that day, all five of them were martyred in. Jim Elliot was 28 years old at the time. It left a huge impression on those who had sent them. On those of us who heard the news about it, when the news came back, we left a huge impression. Some were divided and angry about what had happened, but many others began to be inspired and in an incredible, remarkable turn of events, Elizabeth Elliot and the sister of Nate saint, Rachel saint, go back as a missionaries to the same Alka people, because the Almighty God was in that over several years, many of their AUCA came to faith in Jesus Christ, including some of the men who had killed those violent missionaries, become followers of Jesus Christ, Elizabeth Elliot goes on to write books about it. She writes through the gates of splendor. And we also have a book the shadow of the Almighty and the story of Jim Elliot.
And the connection to Psalm 91 has inspired people hate me as I read an early story and count still today, people are inspired because of Jim Elliot. Jim Elliot knew Psalm 91 he knew the God who entrusted he knew going to the alkas would be dangerous. There would be danger facing him there, he knew that. But oh, Jim Elliot and those others dwelt in the shadow of the Almighty. See, they knew death even had lost its sting. They knew even death could not remove them from the shadow of the Almighty, that even as they came at them with spears, God’s protective shadow was completely over them. And so we have this incredible inspiration. I was blessed to be when I was a student in the 90s. I know that’s a long time ago to have Elizabeth if he had come to our chapel service, and she shared this whole story and inspired many of us again to say, we want to go too, but to make sure that when we go, we read over and over and over again, Psalm 91 and make sure we understand what it is that we go under the protection of Almighty God, that when we go, we dwell in the shadow of the Almighty.
So let me encourage you. Some of you are wondering, should I be a missionary? You should, but make sure you read Psalm 91 you’re wondering, should you go into ministry at all? Psalm 91 as I said, it’s not only for missionaries, it’s for everybody who will be serious about the walk of the Lord. Make sure you orient your whole life to be completely dependent on the Lord, and that the shadow of the Almighty will never let you down. Let’s pray together, father. Thank you so much for this psalm, so rich in its truth and so amazing for those of us in ministry, thank you for Jim Elliot, for Moses Ahadi, for many who serve you, who know the shadow of the Almighty Father, help us to never walk away from the shadow, to never wake up every day saying, I don’t need God’s protection in my life. Protect us from that Lord as we wake up every day. Drive us under the shadow of your wing, help us to learn what it means to abide in you. We ask us in the name of Jesus, amen.
