Psalm 27

Good morning, Church. I am happy to see you all here this morning, and as always I am humbled to stand before you to preach the word of our God. Let’s take a moment to pray. Amen. If you have your bibles, please turn to Psalm 27 and when you get there if you are able, please stand for the reading of God’s word.

Psalm 27 (ESV)

Of David.

The Lord is my light and my salvation;

whom shall I fear?

The Lord is the stronghold of my life;

of whom shall I be afraid?

When evildoers assail me

to eat up my flesh,

my adversaries and foes,

it is they who stumble and fall.

Though an army encamp against me,

my heart shall not fear;

though war arise against me,

yet I will be confident.

One thing have I asked of the Lord,

that will I seek after:

that I may dwell in the house of the Lord

all the days of my life,

to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord

and to inquire in his temple.

For he will hide me in his shelter

in the day of trouble;

he will conceal me under the cover of his tent;

he will lift me high upon a rock.

And now my head shall be lifted up

above my enemies all around me,

and I will offer in his tent

sacrifices with shouts of joy;

I will sing and make melody to the Lord.

Hear, O Lord, when I cry aloud;

be gracious to me and answer me!

You have said, “Seek my face.”

My heart says to you,

“Your face, Lord, do I seek.”

Hide not your face from me.

Turn not your servant away in anger,

O you who have been my help.

Cast me not off; forsake me not,

O God of my salvation!

For my father and my mother have forsaken me,

but the Lord will take me in.

Teach me your way, O Lord,

and lead me on a level path

because of my enemies.

Give me not up to the will of my adversaries;

for false witnesses have risen against me,

and they breathe out violence.

I believe that I shall look upon the goodness of the Lord

in the land of the living!

Wait for the Lord;

be strong, and let your heart take courage;

wait for the Lord!

I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but in this modern day and age we are surrounded by people, no thanks to social media, who claim to have the best strategies to living life. There are millions of books on how to hack life. Everyone is claiming to know the best way to do life, and if you do it their way, you’ll live your best life. We are overflowing with worldviews, religions, and personalities who claim to know the right way to live and how to approach the world. People will look literally anywhere except to God, and His inspired word.

And - there is a reason for this. We all must have some stratedgy by which we approach life. It’s innate in us. This is a feature, not a bug. It can be a good thing. Otherwise we will find ourselves failing left and right, and have no clue how we ended up where we are, and we’ll try again and again ad nauseum until we reach our ripe old age feeling regret and afraid to die. What we have here, however, in Psalm 27, is a perfect strategy for how we, as Christians, should approach how we live. The perfect blueprint for Christian living, as it were. There is lots for us to dive into this morning, but I think it is essential that we read this in light of this framework.

If we look at Psalm 27 from a topographical view, we can see it’s broken into 3 main sections. Verses 1 through 6 are section 1. In section 1 we read King David expressing his great confidence in the Lord. His absolute assurance in his God. Section 2, verses 7-12 take a turn, with David offering up his petitions, his pleading before God in the midst of his suffering and persecution. And lastly section 3, the last 2 verses, 13 and 14, we come to Davids resolution on the matter. His final conclusion on what to do, how to approach moving forward.

You’ll notice that there’s an intentional order here, in this Psalm. Section 1 begins at the very foot of the cross, and in the throneroom of heaven. He begins with God. His dependence on the Lord and the great glories of heaven. Then, in section 2, he turns to his trials. Notice that. He starts with God. Then his problems. How often do we approach life by putting our problems first, then stumbling to look up heavenward? How prideful of us to start with outselves, and our own problems. We put ourselves first, and only when in need we look to God. Typical of human nature. Then, section 3 David turns back to the Lord. We should surround ourselves, our lives with the goodness of God. Sandwhiching our problems between the Lord on both sides.

We see the same structure in the prayer Jesus taught His disciples. Our Father who art in Heaven. It begins with God. Then in the middle we lay out our petitions. Asking God for our daily bread. Asking Him to forgive our trespasses. Then it turns back to God and His glory. For thine is the Kingdom and the Power and the Glory forever! Amen?

Very well, let’s begin. The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life, of whom shall I be afraid? This is absolute assurance! He says that the Lord is his light! The light should not be understood as light of nature which is revealed to all men in common grace. It’s not speaking of the light we hear about in Romans 1 whereby man is without excuse. No this is understood through the following sentence. The lord is my light and my salvation. This then is the light of true salvific grace. That which from darkness flees, and evil trembles. That light which then illuminated David’s soul to justification, and to sanctification. The light that casts out all fear. This is special grace, this is special revelation brought to all those in Christ. What happens when you turn the light on? What happens to darkness? Darkness vanishes. Where there is light there can be no darkness.

The Lord is my light and my salvation he says. This is a man who knows he is in need of saving, is it not? David he no stranger to sin. And remember he is man of small stature, no a giant famed warrior. This is why when he slew goliath it was such a feat, such a testimony to his reliance on God. David knows his salvation is not of his own doing but of the Lord whom he trusts.

Further he goes on to say that the Lord is his stronghold. This can also be translated as the Lord is the strength of my life. He speaks of his spiritual life, not merely his natural life, of which God is of course Lord over as well. But he speaks of true life, spiritual life, the life that no mortal man can take from us, that which is given and sustained by God alone, who perserveres us to our natural end, and thus we have true confidence that God is the stronghold of our life, and that his refrain “whom shall I fear” is bolstered by the fact that none can take our lives from Him who holds us secure.

Dear friends - how often do we tremble at the unknown? When I was a child I used to sleep with the light on. I was petrified of darkness, and of the unknown. It was no help that I had a wild and vivid imagination, and read way too many scary books no doubt… but whenever I felt afraid I would call out to my dad who, without fail, came upstairs every single time until I felt confident enough to sleep. How much more, friends, can we have confidence in the one who doesn’t just turn the lights on, but who is Himself light. Who, in Himself, can have no fellowship with darkness. The one who, like a mighty fortress, wraps us in His love and power and holds us eternally secure. Amen?

Verses 2 and 3 go on “When evildoers assail me to eat upon my flesh, my adversaries and my foes, it is they who will stumble and fall. Though an Army encamp against me my heart shall not fear. Though a war arise against me, yet I will be confident.” Notice the use of war-like language in these verses. Two reasons for this. The first being that David was indeed often at war, both before he was king, on the run from King Saul , and as a king against his enemies, so there is the real sense by which David was facing armies who indeed would have liked to see him dead.

However there is another reason for this language. We are in a constant state of spiritual warfare. We, as men and women of God, face real enemies, principalities, and powers that seek to devour us. And while that be the case, we can stand with Isaiah in Isaiah 54:17 and say “No weapon formed against me shall stand.” We can, in unison with King David say “it is they who will stumble and fall” and “I will be confident” - Beloved we have nothing to fear in this life, if we fear the Lord. If we place our faith and trust in Christ the King, we have absolutely nothing to fear, because nothing can snatch us from His mighty hand. John 10:29 “My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father's hand.”

I want you to notice here that one characteristic of the man of God is that we don’t rely on self-confidence. We place our confidence in that of God. All our hope in this life is in the promises of the Lord and not of ourselves. Now - I don’t mean self-confident in the sense that we should trust our abilities and gifts from God to accomplish God’s will for us in our lives, but rather we are not relying on ourselves to win the victories of life. We don’t trust our own goodness, strength, or abilities in order to defeat the enemy, namely our own sin or the wiles of the devil. No our confidence should begin and end in God, and any true and good confidence in ourselves ought to flow from our confidence in God.

Is this not what distinguishes the Christian from the heathen? It should be, oh how it should be! The Christian should be able to put our lives into perspective. That we in and of ourselves are merely wretches, wrought in iniquity, born into sin, unable of our own power and volition to attain any glory of our own nor able to rightly percieve our problems, or to consider their solutions. But instead to rely soley on the God of our forefathers, putting him at the very beginning and end of all or life’s whoas, since He is indeed the beginning and the end of all things, the alpha and the omega. Our confidence should be entirely and wholly in the Lord.

This first section teaches us much about the Lord - that He is our deliverer, the one who makes us more than conquerors. He is our light, our salvation, our stronghold, our fortress who fills us with assurance despite the most horrendous and trying circumstances. We have been removed as citizens of this world and translated to citizens of heaven. We have great confidence in the great source of all life.

We see these things echoed in parts of section 2. For example when David says “For my father and my mother have forsaken me, but the Lord will take me in.” Consider that, how good it is for a child to have the love of their father and mother, and yet, in sin, parents fall short and even at times do not love their children at all. And think of the damage that is done to a child when the parents forsake or neglect their children. And yet David says “The Lord will take me in.” He knows the truths we later find in Romans 8:38-39 that “neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, either height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” This is his tremendous assurance in the Lord.

Verses 4 through 6 carry on this theme, but I want to briefly look at verse 13. What does he say? David says “I believe that I will look upon the goodness of the Lord” - that is really where it all begins, isn’t it? It starts with belief. It certainly cannot end there, for we know even the demons belive and they tremble, James 2:19 - but if you don’t start with belief, you start nowhere. For if you don’t believe why are you here? Why are you in church? But that belief must lead to something, which brings us back to verse 4.

“One thing I asked of the Lord, that I will seek after, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life” - This is a man whose belief has lead him to have good desires, whose belief has brought him to the throneroom of God in order to plead for the mere presence of the Lord. Furthermore he says he wants to “gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to inqure in his temple” - David has true loving affection for his God. He has such a love for the Lord that he pleas with God just for an opportunity to look upon His glories. Do we have this sort of loving affection for God? Do I? I ask myself this often. How irreverant I am. I pray each of us would leave here today transformed in such a way so as to have our supreme ambitions be not of ourselves, but to merely see the Lord in His glory and goodness, more than anything else.

Brothers and sisters we have an opportunity to play this out in real time week after week. When we, the saints of God, enter His temple on the Lord’s Day, we ought not do so in order to see others or to be seen. We ought not be here for any vanity, or for any selfish desire, or to get something out of church. I have heard countless times where people have left good churches because they were unhappy with petty things, because they didn’t have a partiular “feeling” or the “atmosphere” wasn’t right. The band wasn’t cool enough or the music wasn’t loud enough. The pastor was too “stuffy” or “religious”. We must fix our understanding of God and the gathering of the saints, and we can look to David here to understand exactly how to do that.

We ought to be entering the gathering of the saints weekly, not to meet some petty need of ourselves, but to gaze upon the glory of the Lord. To hear Him speak to us in His word and to glorify Him, not our vain or carnal desires, but to turn back His blessings in worship. Our primary purpose for gathering is what David says here, that we may dwell in the presence of the Lord, by the means He has prescribed, in this temporary season of life until He calls us into His heavenly court. Gaze upon the Lord with faith, dear church. So that we may join in with the wonderful hymn “it is well” when horashio writes “Oh Lord, haste the day, when my faith shall be sight!”

After David expresses his chief desires, in verses 5 and 6, he bolsters this confession with the assurance he expressed in the first few verses. He trusts that in the “day of his trouble” as he says it, that the Lord will protect him, hide him from peril, conceal him from danger and will lift him to victory over his enemies. And in response to that trust in the Lord, David turns to praise. He says he will offer sacrifices, shouts of joy, and song to the Lord! Think of the order of things again before we move onto section 2 here. Before bringing his requests, his petitions before God, David has started by honoring God for his salvation, thanking God for His power over His enemies, expressing His chief desires to be with God, and his intent to praise God in all things. Do we start our prayers this way? I know I for sure have failed at this miserably.

So we begin section two. David begins bringing his problems before God, pleading for God to answer him. And he is very specific. “Hear O Lord when I cry aloud, be gracious to me and answer me! You have said ‘seek my face’ My heart says ‘hide not your face from me’” What a wonderful couple of verses we have hear. David humbles himself before God, pleading to be heard. And we see that He knows it is God who calls us into prayer. “Seek my face” says the Lord. And we know from Matthew 7:7 that should we seek Him, we shall find Him. Praise the Lord. “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.”

“Turn not your servant away in anger. O you who have been my help, Cast me not off; forsake me not O God of my salvation. For my father and my mother have forsaken me, but the Lord will take me in.” David is a man who knows he is a sinner. A man who knows he has and will do evil, and thus he pleads with our Lord not to cast him away or forsake him. This is all but a call of repentance. But he finishes the epithet with “but the Lord will take me in.” Isn’t this just like the relationship of a child with a parent?

Sometimes my son will have a day where he is struggling to be obedient. He says the worst thing for him to hear in those moments is “fine, do whatever you want.” - His fear, although he knows I will always love him and never abandon him, is that I will turn away from him and forsake him in those moments. How much more do we disappoint our heavenly father? David knows this, and we see that perfectly here in Psalm 27. “Hide not your face from me Lord” followed by the confident refrain of “the Lord will take me in.”

Verse 11 teaches us something else that I find very relevant for the church today. He says “Teach me your way O Lord, and lead me on a level path because of my enemies.” He starts with “teach me your way” - What he is asking for is theological knowledge and wisdom. To know the way of God is to learn about who He is and what He has done. This is all theology is. The study of God. And you and I are all called to pray the same. To desire God is to seek to know Him, and to know Him we must study what He has revealed of Himself to us.

I know some of you young men have no problem studying the girl your into, or the sport you love, but do you find any time to study the Lord who made you? Why is it some men can remember every statistic of their favorite football player, but they can’t recite a single verse from the scripture? I say this with a mirror, I’m guilty of falling short here as well. Finally ending section 2 David pleads that God would not deliver him over to his enemies, and calls them out for their wickedness. “They breath out violence” he says.

And so it is, we have arrived at King David’s conclusion. He says “I believe I shall look upon the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living” - we return to his full certainty in the Lord. He knows with full assurance that he shall see the Lord in glory when his days come to an end and thus he can wait on the Lord for an answer to his prayers. He says as much in the final verse. “Wait for the Lord, be strong, let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord” - Dear friends when we pray, do our prayers look like this? When we approach our lives, does our stratedgy look like this? When life’s problems come our way, is this how we respond?

Start in the very heavenly realms with the Lord, begin at the foot of the cross before Christ the King and give Him the praise and honor that is due. Bless and praise Him who is our light and salvation. Only then bring your requests to God and ask Him for what you need. And then in doing so, turn back to him with full assurance and praise. And then wait. Church God is not a vending machine, nor does He always answer yes to your prayers. But He always does answer them. Wait on the Lord. Wait as He will do things in His way and in His time and no one can thwart the will of God, so wait on Him who is your light and salvation, your stronghold.

And for those who may not believe, repent. Come to Christ, confess and turn from your sin, and be welcomed into the family of God, be adopted by this father, who will never leave or forsake you. Come and have full confidence, and the perfect stratedgy by which to live your life. Come.

Pray with me.