Trouble presses on the inhabitants of the earth. Trouble lays hold on the hearts, minds, and souls of men and shakes them to the depths of their beings. Trouble shocks and astonishes. In its wake come fear and anxiety. The world is full of trouble. Trouble is what the fall of Adam and Eve into sin brought on the world.

The day of trouble.

It may be a day, a week, a month, or a year. The day of trouble is a period of time wholly characterized by trouble. In that day of trouble, there is nothing but trouble all around. Everywhere one looks there is trouble. There appears to be no way out of that trouble. The events of that day fill the souls of men with anguish.

Historically, the day of trouble was the day of God’s vengeance against Nineveh, the chief city of the Assyrian Empire and the seat of the world power of that day. Assyria was vile in itself because of its sins. Assyria also afflicted and persecuted the church of God. Assyria had violently and cruelly cut down and uprooted the apostate church of the nation of Israel. In doing that, it is true, Assyria was merely an ax and a spade in the hand of Jehovah, who was punishing Israel for her impenitent idolatry, unbelief, and other sins. Yet Assyria afflicted and persecuted in pride. Assyria vaunted itself against God. Assyria proudly swept down from Israel to Judah like a wolf on a sheepfold. That bitter and hasty nation of Assyria haughtily marched up to the gates of Jerusalem and defied the God of Judah. The angel of Jehovah went out of Jerusalem and slew 185,000 Assyrians in one night. Still, that antichristian kingdom lifted itself up against God and provoked him to anger and jealousy.

So the day of trouble came on the world. It was the day of the anger and fierce wrath of God.

God is holy. In his holiness he is absolutely consecrated to the glory of his name as the only good God. God in his holiness maintains the holiness of his name over against man, who defies him. God is God, and he maintains himself as God. He marches to do battle with his enemies, and he arrays all his forces against Assyria to bring down and to destroy.

The coming of God is evident in the creation. His way is in the whirlwind and in the storm, and the clouds are the dust of his feet. When he comes in vengeance, he affects the whole creation. It is a day of trouble for the whole creation. The sea is rebuked and dries up. Jehovah dries up the rivers and makes desolate the richest places of the earth, such as Bashan and Carmel. When he marches, the mountains quake, the hills melt, the earth and all that dwell therein are burned. When he comes against Assyria, the smoke and dust of Assyria’s ruins drift on the wind. The tremors of its fall ripple across a wide swath of the earth. The shouts and cries of its distressed inhabitants are heard in the distance. When God brings down a nation in his anger, there are widespread repercussions all around the scene of destruction.

And the question must be asked: who can abide the fierceness of his anger? Can you? Can I? Can anyone in the world? None can stand before the indignation of God. None can stand in the face of his wrath in the day of trouble.

That day is every day for the wicked. That day is every day since the fall of Adam into sin. God is angry with the wicked every day. So the wicked are like the troubled sea when it cannot rest. He blows on them, and they have no peace. That certainly must be said of our age. What terrible troubles and calamities Jehovah brings. More are to come.

The Lord also punctuates time and history with notable days of trouble—times of widespread calamity for all the inhabitants of the earth. These days of trouble may seem as a passing moment, a few hours, a day, a few weeks, or months. Then the trouble seems to pass, but another trouble will surely come to take its place. And all these times of trouble point, as so many signs, to the great and dreadful day of the Lord—the final, worldwide day of trouble when Jehovah will shake the heavens and the earth, the sea and the dry land, and all nations.

In a world of trouble lives God’s church, his elect, whom he loves. The calamity that comes on the world in God’s fierce anger invariably affects the church. She is yet flesh and blood. She has yet her life on this side of the grave. She is deeply affected in the day of trouble. Only the church is really so deeply and profoundly moved by the works of Jehovah in the day of trouble. Only she is touched in the depths of her heart, mind, and soul by these troubles. Only she sees the hand of God behind it all and beholds in it all the coming of God. And she must go through all the troubles of God’s judgments on the world. The question can creep into her mind and press itself on her heart: will the Lord in wrath remember mercy?

A stronghold in the day of trouble.

A stronghold is an impregnable fortress. It is a great defensive power to protect. Behind its stout defenses, everyone inside the stronghold has refuge and safety during the time of trouble. The trouble that rages outside cannot harm them, move them, or destroy them.

Jehovah is the stronghold.

The stronghold is not of man or by man, and it is not of this earth. The stronghold is of Jehovah. Still more, he does not merely provide a stronghold, but the stronghold is the immutable, omnipotent, sovereign, righteous, and gracious Jehovah God himself.

Because Jehovah is the stronghold, it is impregnable. Who can overcome him? Who can destroy those whom he has determined to save?

Because Jehovah is the stronghold, it is unchangeable. He is the i am that i am. He never changes in his being, in his perfections, or in his promise to his people. Always, in every trouble, Jehovah is the same: a stronghold in the day of trouble.

Jehovah is good. Jehovah is a stronghold in his goodness.

Jehovah’s goodness is his absolute ethical perfection. He is good in his being and in everything he does. He alone is good. He is absolutely good. He reveals his goodness in all his dealings with men.

In his goodness Jehovah God never acquits the wicked. He is good, and therefore he has a divine abhorrence of all that is evil. He is good, so he is determined to destroy all that is wicked. He is good, so he never calls the evil good and the good evil. He is good, so he hates all the workers of iniquity.

Because Jehovah is good, there is a day of trouble. As the good God in his holiness, he comes against the ungodly world. Because Jehovah is good, there is only trouble for the world. There is never some favor and some wrath on the ungodly world. Jehovah is good, so there is only wrath against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness. The only day there can ever be for the rebellious world is a day of trouble. Every day is leading to the great day of the revelation of the righteous judgment of God, and that day will pass into the eternal day of trouble for the ungodly.

Because he is good, Jehovah is a stronghold in the day of trouble. In his goodness Jehovah loves the righteous and blesses them. He is ever mindful of his people. He forgives their sins. He imputes to them righteousness by faith. Freed from guilt—guilt by which they should perish with the world—and declared righteous for Christ’s sake, they are worthy of salvation. In his goodness he becomes to them a stronghold in the day of trouble. He does not take them out of the trouble. The trouble will rage all around that fortress. But he takes them into the stronghold and preserves them in the trouble.

And because the stronghold is Jehovah and he is good, such is his preservation of his saints that all troubles are for their salvation. All the troubles that surround them, that rage in the world about them, and that they experience in the world serve for their eternal profit. In the midst of all the trouble, Jehovah is good to them, only good, always good; and he causes that trouble to work for their salvation.

A stronghold to those who trust in him.

Trust is faith. Faith is confidence that God is their God. By faith they are absolutely sure that Jehovah is in control of the trouble. By faith they know that Jehovah will keep them safe in the trouble and that it cannot destroy their souls. By faith they know that Jehovah will turn the trouble to their salvation. They know the trouble must come. Their confidence is not that Jehovah will not send trouble. They know that he is good and that he will pour out trouble—nothing but trouble—on the world. They know that they are in the world and that they will go through the trouble too. They know that in the day of trouble Jehovah is a stronghold to them. They know that they are in the stronghold because they know that they belong to Jesus Christ, the revelation of Jehovah, as a stronghold.

What is the basis of their confidence in Jehovah? They know that Jehovah knows everyone who trusts in him. To know is to love. Jehovah loves all those who trust in him. Jehovah is good. Jehovah does not love everyone. He surely did not love the Assyrians, whom he came to destroy. He did not love apostate Israel and Judah. He came with wrath to avenge his cause against them with great trouble. He is a stronghold to those who trust in him because he loves them. He loves them with an eternal love. His love is ever fervent, seeks them, and desires their good. He appointed them to salvation in his love.

That Jehovah knows those who trust in him does not mean that he loves in response to their trust in him. And it does not mean that he loves everyone, desires to save everyone, opens the doors of his stronghold to everyone who reciprocates his love by trusting in him, and then he loves even more those who trust in him, and he destroys those who do not love him.

It is not that we first loved him, but that he first loved us. Jehovah’s love is first. Jehovah’s love is creative. The confidence of those who trust in Jehovah is the result and work of his love. Jehovah’s love draws to himself those whom he loves. They trust in him because they know that he loves them. Where there is no assurance of love, there can be no confidence and trust. If I do not know that someone loves me, I will not trust him. Those who trust in Jehovah know that he loves them, and they run to him, they draw near to him, and they repose all their confidence in him as a stronghold in the day of trouble.

How do they know that Jehovah loves them? They know Jehovah as the God of the cross of Christ. The cross of Christ is the commendation of the love of God. At the cross, God himself in the person of the Son and in human flesh underwent the most terrible day of trouble that the world has ever seen. It was a day of fury, vengeance, and fierce wrath for his adversaries and enemies. God’s people, whom he loves, were his enemies! They hated God in the darkness of their minds and with the enmity of their hearts. In order to save them, he took all their sins, heaped them on his Son, and poured out unspeakable trouble on him. Wave after wave of many eternities of trouble that his people deserved all concentrated on Christ and were all condensed into a few awful hours of trouble. What a day of trouble!

A day of salvation!

There we see the love of God. God loved his enemies, who, although his elect people, were guilty by nature. In his goodness he will not acquit the guilty. In order to acquit his elect people and deliver them from trouble, he took all their trouble on himself in Christ. That is how much God loves them. He spared not himself and his own Son immense trouble, so that his people might not perish with the world in the day of trouble. He forgives their sins. He imputes to them righteousness. He draws them to himself as the stronghold in the day of trouble. As the stronghold, he ever keeps them safe.

So those who trust in him know the love of God. In the day of trouble, they run to him. In him they are perfectly safe now and forever.

A mighty fortress is our God, a stronghold in the day of trouble. In him we are safe until the day of trouble is past and the light dawns on a new creation of perfection without any trouble.