God, Our Refuge

Even the Most High, your dwelling place, 10No evil shall befall you, Nor shall any plague come near your dwelling; 11For He shall give His angels charge over you, To keep you in all your ways. 12In their hands they shall bear you up, Lest you dash your foot against a stone. 13You shall tread upon the lion and the cobra, The young lion and the serpent you shall trample underfoot.

It says in Psalm 91:10:“No evil shall befall you,

Nor shall any plague come near your dwelling.”

This verse does not say that no harm will come to us. What it does say is that no “evil shall befall us.” I believe that what the psalmist means is that no evil will triumph over us.

As I reflect on this, I think of a story Corrie Ten Boom related in her book, The Hiding Place. There is no doubt that the Nazi concentration camps were among some of the most evil places ever devised by men.

Corrie Ten Boom and her sister, Betsie, had sent to the concentration camp, Ravensbruck, for hiding Jews from the Nazis. In her book, we read of the account of her sister Betsie dying of an illness in the concentration camp. Evil certainly was done to Betsie, but evil did not triumph. Here is the account of Corrie looking upon the body of her sister as she describes it in The Hiding Place.

“For there lay Betsie, her eyes closed as if in sleep, her face full and young. The care lines, the grief lines, the deep hollows of hunger and disease were simply gone. In front of me was the Betsie of Haarlem, happy and at peace. Stronger! Freer! This was the Betsie of heaven, bursting with joy and health. Even her hair was graciously in place as if an angel had ministered to her.”

Though she had been sent to the most evil of places and had perished there, evil did not triumph over Betsie Ten Boom, and it will not triumph over us if we trust in Christ Jesus.

IV. Because God is our refuge, He will delivers us

(Psalm 91:14-15)

14"Because he has set his love upon Me, therefore I will deliver him; I will set him on high, because he has known My name. 15He shall call upon Me, and I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble;

I will deliver him and honor him.

In Psalm 91:14 it says that if we set our love upon God, He will deliver us and be with us in trouble. If we make a choice to love God, then we will enjoy the protection of His love. If we go to God as our refuge and not the world, then we have His love as a canopy over us. Though God loves everyone, we will not experience the comfort and assurance of that love until we find our refuge in Jesus Christ.

There is a story I heard about a Nigerian pastor who had a church in a predominantly Muslim part of his country. His church received numerous threats from militant Muslims in his area. One night during a service, an angry mob surrounded his church. The pastor dismissed his congregation and faced the mob’s fury alone.

They grabbed him and poured gasoline over him. When they tried to ignite the pastor, nothing happened. Thinking that something was wrong with the gasoline, they poured more over the pastor. They were still unable to set the pastor on fire. They weren’t able to set the pastor on fire because you can’t set something on fire that already is on fire! Long ago, God had set His love upon the life of this pastor and now his heart was ablaze with it!