GOD IS WITH YOU

 

A,  Introduction:  We just finished four lessons on Psalm 23, written by Israel’s great King David.  Its opening line is familiar to multitudes:  The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want (Ps 23:1, KJV).

  1. In Psalm 23 David extoled the blessings and benefits of having Almighty God as his Shepherd.  David was a shepherd before he became a king, and he knew the role that a good shepherd played in the life of his sheep.  A shepherd was a provider, protector, and provider for his flock.
  2. The best-known line in Psalm 23 is: Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of

death, I will fear no evil for you are with me (Ps 23:4, ESV).

b,  The valley of the shadow of death refers not only to the fact that we all die, it refers to this life in general.  This world is infused with death and corruption due to sin, going back to the first man, Adam and life is challenging for all of us. Gen 2:17; Gen 3:17-19; Rom 5:12-14; etc.

  1. David himself faced many dangers, hardships, pain, failures, and loss in his life. Yet David was able to say that he feared no evil because the Lord, his Shepherd, was with him.

2,  God’s message to His people is always:  Fear not, for I am with you.  Nothing can come against you that is bigger than me.  You are mine, and I will get your through until I get you out.

  1. Isa 43:1-2—Fear not, for I have redeemed you. I have called you by name, you are mine (ESV).  When you go through deep waters and great trouble, I will be with you.  When you go through rivers of difficulty, you will not drown!  When you walk through the fire of oppression, you will not be burned up; the flames will not consume you (NLT).
  2. David lived with an awareness that the Lord was with him. In this next series of lessons, we’re going to focus on what it means to have the Lord with us.  And we’ll talk about how to learn to live with an awareness of His presence so that, like David, we can live without fear.

 

  1. Let’s begin with facts about God. God is Omnipotent (All Powerful), Omniscient (All Knowing), and Omnipresent (Present everywhere at once).  There’s no place God is not.  Therefore, He is present with us.
  2. God always has been and always will be with us, whether we see or feel Him since there’s no place God is not. You committed your worst sin in the presence of God, but didn’t know it.
  3. David wrote: Ps 139:7-12—I can never escape from your spirit.  I can never get away from your presence!  If I go up to heaven, you are there; if I go down to the place of the dead (Hell), you are there… I could ask the darkness to hide me and the light around me to become night—but even in darkness I cannot hide from you (NLT).
  4. God said to Jeremiah the prophet: Jer 23:23-24—Am I a God who is only in one place?  Asks the Lord…can anyone hide form me?  Am I not everywhere, in all the heavens and the earth, asks the Lord (NLT); Don’t I fill heaven and earth (NIRV); I am everywhere—both near and far, in heaven and on earth.  There are no secret places where you can hide from me (CEV).
  5. Paul the apostle wrote: Eph 1:23—Christ…fills everything everywhere with his presence (NLT); (God) fills everything everywhere [with Himself] (Amp); (He) everywhere fills the universe with Himself (Weymouth).
  6. Because God is God, and because He is Omnipresent (present everywhere at once), He is fully present with you, as though you were the only person on earth.
  7. Almighty God isn’t divided in eight-billion ways among all the people of earth. He is fully present with each one of us at the same time, as though we were the only person on earth..
  8. Because God is Omniscient (All Knowing) He foreknew every member of the human race before we were born. He knew when and where we would be born, and all the circumstances of our lives.
  9. David wrote: Ps 139:15-16—You watched me as I was being formed…in the dark of the womb.  You saw me before I was born.  Every day of my life was recorded in your book (NLT).
  10. In the midst of a severe trial, David wrote: Ps 56:8—You keep track of all my sorrows.  You have collected all my tears in your bottle.  You have recorded each one in your book (NLT)
  11. Jesus stated that God the Father knows how many hairs we have on our head (Matt 10:30). This is more than a statement about God’s Omniscience (All-knowingness).
  12. It is a statement about His intimate care for each of us as individuals. He is aware of and keeps track of the details in each of our lives
  13. God is with us, perfectly present everywhere at once, loving and reigning and upholding all things by the word of His power.
  14. God is love (I John 4:8). Because He is love, He can do nothing but love.  Love motivated Almighty God to create us and to redeem us from sin.  Eph 1:4—Long age, even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ (NLT).  I John 4:9—God showed how much he loved us by sending his only Son into the world so that we might have eternal life through him (NLT).
  15. God is Sovereign, which means that He is the Supreme (highest) power and authority in the universe. He is the King of the Universe and reigns or rules over everything.
  16. Rev 19:6—For the Lord our God, the Almighty, reigns (ESV). Heb 1:3—(Jesus) is the perfect imprint and very image of [God’s] nature, upholding and maintaining and guiding and propelling the universe by His mighty word of power (Amp).
  17. Because God is Omniscient (All Knowing), nothing takes Him by surprise. Because He is Omnipotent (All Powerful), nothing is greater in power than Him.  Nothing can come against us that is bigger than God.  There is nothing for which He does not already have a plan to cause it to serve His purposes for His glory and our good. Eph 1:11; Rom 8:28
  18. Almighty God is with us, not only in presence, but He is with us in intent—He is for us. The word for is used to indicate the object toward which one’s desire and activity is directed.  God is with us—His desire and activity is directed toward us.

4,  God’s message to His people is always:  Fear not:  I am with you to help you.  I want to help you.  This is the value of His constant presence:  He will be with you because He is Omnipresent.  He will help you because He loves you and is for you. Ps 56:9; Rom 8:31

  1. Isa 41:10:13-14—Fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand…It is I who say to you, “Fear not, I am the one who helps you”…Fear not, you worm Jacob, you men of Israel! I am the one who helps you, declares the Lord; your Redeemer is the Holy one of Israel (ESV).
  2. When God spoke these words, Israel was deteriorating spiritually and politically because of idolatry and worldly alliances. The prophet Isaiah was sent to warn them of impending judgment, first by Assyria and then by Babylon, if they did not repent and turn to God.
  3. God’s statement “I am here to help you” shows His inclination toward them. It is an attitude of (kindness).  His inclination is to do them good.
  4. God called Israel (Jacob) a worm, not as an insult, but as an expression of their helpless to help or protect themselves when they were in trouble—just like a worm can’t help itself.
  5. Ps 46:1—God is our refuge and strength [mighty and impenetrable to temptation] a very present

and well-proved help in trouble.  Therefore we will not fear (Amp); God is our refuge and strength, an ever present help in trouble.  Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging (NIV).

  1. God is present with us everywhere all the time. But we aren’t aware of it.  We believe in God, but we think of God as up in Heaven and ourselves as down here on earth.  God is indeed in Heaven, but He is also right here with us, perfectly present with us, loving and reigning and upholding all things by the word of His power.
  2. In Ps 23:4 David said: I will fear no evil for you are with me (ESV).  David lived with a consciousness of God’s presence with him.  It wasn’t a supernatural experience or a manifestation where David could see or feel it.  It was an awareness.
  3. When you know something is so, it affects how you think and act. If you run out of milk for tomorrow’s breakfast, you are conscious or aware of the fact that the grocery store stays open until 10:00 p.m. so you can run to the store and get some more milk.
  4. When we acknowledge God’s presence (talk about it, think about it), it increases our awareness of the fact that He is present with us.
  5. We’ll talk more about it as we go through this series, But note one point. When we read David’s psalms, we find that he made an effort to think about the Lord and to keep his mind focused on God:  For example:  Ps 63:6—(In the night watches) I lie awake thinking of you, meditating on you through the night.  I think how much you have helped me (NLT).
  6. David knew that God’s presence, God with him, was salvation and he lived with that awareness. Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me?  Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God (P2 42:5, ESV).
  7. In the original language the word that is translated my salvation and God is the Hebrew word for face. It can be used literally for a face, but it can be used figuratively to mean the entire person or his presence.  Here it means God’s presence is salvation (KJV marginal note).
  8. Note these translations: I shall yet praise Him, my help and my God (Amp); I shall yet praise him for his saving help (NIV, note); My present Salvation and my God (Spurrell); for the help of His presence (NASB).

 

  1. David had numerous examples recorded in the Old Testament Scriptures of what it meant to have God with people to help them in times of trouble. Consider one example—David’s ancestor Jacob, grandson of Abraham, the father of the Jewish people.
  2. One night while on a journey, Jacob went to sleep and had a dream. In the dream he saw a stairway (ladder) reaching from earth to heaven and the angels of God going up and down the ladder.
  3. Almighty God stood at the top of the stairs and told Jacob: I am the God of your grandfather Abraham, and your father Isaac.  I will give you the land you are lying on to you and your descendants (Gen 28:11-12).  There’s a lot in this, but notice two statements.
  4. God said: What’s more, I will be with you, and I will protect you wherever you go.  I will someday bring you safely back to this land (Canaan).  I will be with you constantly until I give you everything I have promised (Gen 28:13-15, NLT).
  5. When Jacob woke up from his dream, note what he said: Surely the Lord was in this place, and I wasn’t even aware of it (Gen 28:16, NLT).  That’s the way most of us are.
  6. Jacob didn’t go home for 20 years, and he faced many hardships. He was cheated a number of times by his future father-in-law.  He had twelve sons who sold their brother Joseph (Jacob’s favorite son) into slavery, and then told their father that a wild animal killed his son.
  7. Later, Jacob and his family had to leave their homeland and travel to Egypt in a time of severe famine. Jacob eventually died in Egypt.  Only his bones went go back to Canaan.
  8. Yet, when we read the entire account of Jacob’s life, we find that God was with him and delivered him out of some of his troubles. Other troubles, God got Jacob through until he got him out.  Still others, God reversed and worked for good.  (Many lessons for another day.)
  9. At the end of his life, as Jacob was giving his final blessing to his sons before he died, he said: God (Himself)…Who has [been my Shepherd and has led and] fed me since I came into being until this day, the redeeming Angel—that is, the Angel the Redeemer [not a created being, but the Lord Himself]—Who has redeemed me continually from every evil, bless the lads (Gen 48:15-16, Amp).
  10. The point for our discussion is this. Jacob didn’t always live with the awareness that God was present with him.  God still ultimately helped Jacob, but Jacob experienced the emotional turmoil that comes from not knowing that God was perfectly present with him, loving and reigning, and upholding all things by the word of his power.
  11. At one point in Jacob’s life, during the time of severe famine in Canaan, he heard that there was food in Egypt, and he sent his sons to Egypt to try to buy food. Gen 42
  12. Unbeknownst to them, the man in charge of Egypt’s food distribution program was their long-lost brother Joseph, whom they sent into slavery many years earlier.
  13. Joseph didn’t immediately reveal himself to his brothers. Joseph sent them home with food, but put them through a series of tests to see if their character had changed.  Joseph put one of the brothers (Simeon) in prison, and sent the rest home with instructions to bring their youngest brother (Benjamin) back to him before they could have more food.
  14. When the brothers returned home to their father Jacob with food, but no Simeon and the possibility of losing Benjamin, Jacob exclaimed: You have deprived me of my children!  Jospeh has disappeared, Simeon is gone, and now you want to take Benjamin, too.  Everything is going against me (Gen 42:36, NLT).
  15. According to what Jacob could see, everything was going against him.  But actually, everything was going in the right direction for him.  Jacob was about to be reunited with his son Jospeh, and he and his family were going to go to Egypt where they would have more than enough food to make it through the rest of the famine.
  16. Even though Jacob didn’t realize that God was with him, God helped him anyway.  But Jacob had no peace in the midst of the storm because he did not live with the awareness that the Lord was with him.
  17. Note the contrast between Jacob and David. David lived with the consciousness, the awareness, that God was with him, and that gave him peace and hope in the midst of dire circumstances.
  18. This doesn’t mean that David never experienced negative emotions. It means that when fearsome circumstances arose and he felt fear and despair, he remembered God.
  19. While being pursued by men intent on killing him, David wrote: When I am afraid, I put my trust in you…This I know, that God is for me (Ps 56:3; 9).
  20. David also wrote: Ps 27:1-3—The Lord is my place of safety.  Why should I be afraid (NIRV)… Though a mighty army surrounds me, my heart will know no fear.  Even if they attack me, I remain confident (NLT).  Let’s reread two of his psalms that we quoted earlier in the lesson.
  21. Ps 42:5—Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil? Hope in God…my salvation and my God (ESV).  The Hebrew means:  His presence is salvation.
  22. Ps 23:4—Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil for you are with me (ESV).
  23. David ended Psalm 23 with these words: Ps 23:6—Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life (ESV).
  24. When David looked back over his life, like Jacob, could see clearly that God had been with him and helped him—even though he didn’t always see it in the midst of his troubles.
  25. However, living with the awareness, the consciousness, that God was with him and for him made the journey easier and lightened David’s load.

 

  1. Conclusion: Over the next several weeks, we’re going to take some time to talk about how we can develop a greater awareness of the fact that God is with and for each of us.  Much more next week!