“God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.”
Psalm 46:1
Those who know the story of Martin Luther’s conversion are aware that he was converted while studying Romans 1:17, “The righteous shall live by faith.” It was through these words that his eyes were opened to see salvation as the gift of God through faith, not a reward for good behavior. He was, in his own words, “reborn” and enabled to walk “through the open doors of paradise.”
From then on, Luther would always be a “Romans man.” But we often forget that he was also a “Psalms man” and that the psalms had just as big an impact on his life as did Romans. Luther taught the psalms for many years and loved them dearly. And of all the Psalms, His favorite was Psalm 46. During the darkest hours of the Reformation when he was discouraged and depressed and under constant attack, he would turn to his good friend Philip Melanchthon and say, “Come, Philip, let’s sing the forty-sixth Psalm.” Then they would sing it in Luther’s own German version (loosely translated here):
A mighty fortress is our God / A good defense and weapon;
He helps us freely out of all distress / And all that to us happens
We know this hymn in English as “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.”
Luther said, “We sing this psalm to the praise of God, because God is with us and powerfully and miraculously preserves and defends his church and his word against all fanatical spirits, against the gates of hell, against the implacable hatred of the devil, and against all the assaults of the world, the flesh and sin.”
Luther’s hymn, and the Psalm that inspired, it continue to comfort believers even today. As Lutheran scholar, H. C. Leupold has said, “Few psalms breathe the spirit of sturdy confidence in the Lord in the midst of very real dangers as strongly as does this one.”
May we be helped as we look at this Psalm this morning
Pastor Scott