Seek His Face
Notes
Transcript
Good morning! My name is Daniel Chambers. After months of being behind the scenes, I wish I could see you face-to-face this morning. In person, right here, without the need of livestreams, or masks. Not for political reasons…but because I long for face-to-face connection. We all do.
Faces communicate so very much! It’s in our speech, when we want to assess someone’s trustworthiness, we ask them to “look at us”. When our little children want our attention, they take their hands, put them on the sides of our face, and turn our face towards them. They gaze into our eyes and assess us, asking “Can I trust you? Will you protect me?” and, if the answer to those questions are “Yes”, our kids will have the courage to face whatever fear they have.
It’s the same in all our relationships, and never more needed when we are afraid. Looking at each other face-to-face allows us to ask those questions of one another. “Can I trust you?” “Will you protect me?” and, “Will you stand with me, because I am afraid.”
These are not new questions. They are as old as humanity, they echo from Adam, to David, to us.
Please stand for the reading of Psalm 27 from God’s Word. You can also pull it up in the You Version app by going to more/events, and then First Baptist Park Street should pop up.
Psalm 27
We begin with First, Seek His Face for Trust. That’s how this Psalm begins - with a declaration - singing, even - of trust:
The Lord is my light and my salvation—
whom should I fear?
The Lord is the stronghold of my life—
whom should I dread?
-We can trust his strength (v2-3). David has seen that the Lord is trustworthy, he remembers the Lord caused his enemies stumble and fall before, so he states trust that even if the enemies grow in number - an army, a war - he will still be confident.
How did he have this confidence? When he is in the presence of the Lord.
Look with me, what follows the statement of trust - I will still be confident - is his request of the Lord: to dwell with the Lord, seeking him. Brothers and sisters, this is the language of the heart: fear and dread give way through seeking the Lord’s Face to gazing, singing, shouting with joy. This is not a far and lofty God, this is intimate language for family…and a God who is even more trustworthy than family!
Look at verse 10. Even if my father and mother abandon me, the Lord cares for me.
-We can trust God will never abandon us (v9-10, esp. v10)
That word “care” has Hebrew connections with adoption. This is God telling us that even if everyone else abandons us, if we feel that we are alone, we are never alone. Does that mean David never got afraid? Oh, he did…but not afraid of his enemies. He feared the face of the Lord even looking away from him. And if you and I get close to the Lord’s face we will see such beauty, such love, and such power that our fears will fade and we will trust that even in times of troubles we will, like David says in verse 13, will see the Lords goodness here, in the land of the living.
Illustrate:
I was shown just how this works on Monday night. You see, I have affection for Portland Oregon. I lived outside of Portland for my 7th and 8th grades. I’ve been following the violence in Portland, now on day 78. I’m not talking about the right to peaceful protest as outlined in the Constitution. I’m talking about organized groups, breathing violence night in, night out. And I got afraid. What if they target churches? What if it spreads? Will I have to stand with a gun, protecting my family? My thoughts started spinning and I could hardly fall asleep, waking up time and time again.
Application:
Maybe you’ve had something similar happen. It’s why we must follow the pattern of the Psalm: Talk to yourself, don’t listen to yourself. (Repeat) This is what David does! He’s known fear, dread, terror. And so he begins with a declaration of trust - not in his strength, or Israel’s armies, or the police, or politicians, but trust in Lord, given by seeking his face.
Use talking to yourself to begin to talk to the Lord – that’s what prayer is! - asking his Holy Spirit to bring to mind times past where you saw his face. Your fears will fade in the light of his glory and grace. His face.
Transition: Trust in the Lord is the rock that a stronghold is built on, and strongholds are made for protection.
Which is why we not only seek his face for trust, we seek his face for protection.
(13:00)
-Protection from who?
-We seek his face for protection from our true enemy. The apostle Paul reminds us, “our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this darkness, against evil, spiritual forces in the heavens.”
By rulers and authorities, Paul is not talking about Joe Biden or Donald Trump, or any politician. Paul knows this - he wrote that phrase in a time where the Roman emperors had immense power to destroy lives. We so quickly see others as our enemy we forget our true enemy.
It is only once we are very clear on who our true enemy is, we can then
-seek his face for Protection from armies, adversaries, foes, and false witnesses in this world(v12)
Rising up against us, breathing violence. And it’s not just here. There are real foes, attempting real violence to followers of Christ all over the world. In Nigeria, the government can’t stop a Islamic terrorist group that regularly targets villages thought to be “Christian”. In China, an elderly man tried to stop police from tearing down a cross, and he was viciously beaten. Where do you go when the structures of order through law are against you? This is a question believers in this country have not had to ask for a long, long time. But we are all asking it today. The answer has been in Scripture all along:
Seek his face. Though an army deploys against us, though war breaks out against us…Look what happens, verse 5: we are concealed, sheltered, hidden from our foes, put in a protected place…himself. He is our stronghold! Our protection does not come from our system of government. It is not in the 2nd amendment. It is not in the Supreme court. And, most definitely, our protection will not come from the man we elect to be president this fall.
Seek his face. He is our stronghold. How do we do this? Spend time with him to feel his protection, his covering, his shelter.
There is a clear way to do this today:
Seek His face, not Facebook. And, I want to pause and welcome those of you who are joining us through social media this morning…
What I mean is this: I was talking to someone from FBC. They had been getting more and more anxious in life. So, a few weeks ago, they quit Facebook. And, that the time they were formerly spending on facebook…they were spending it with the Lord, in his presence. The result was more peace, more joy. Every one of us can take a good, honest look at how we use social media and cut it in half, or cut it out.
We seek his face, and he gives us trust in him, and protection from enemies both spiritual and physical. It does not stop there. There is more the face of the Lord will give to us. You see, a stronghold is not only good for defense, but it is a place of assault. Where courageous soldiers prepare to charge into battle.
We not only seek his face for trust, and protection, but seek his face for courage.
(8:00)
-Courage to face our enemies
This Psalm states in verse11 that if we seek his face, he will give us courage and guidance:
show me your way, Lord,
and lead me on a level path.
But it tells us more – it tells us what does courage looks like: It looks like Joshua (right there, verse 14) It’s no accident that David took these words right from Joshua, chapter 1, verse 8. Some of you know it!
“Haven’t I commanded you: be strong and courageous? Do not be afraid or discouraged, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.”[1]
They weren’t fighting a rearguard battle, desperately trying to hold on, as so many churches are today. No! They were growing God’s kingdom, and they had a name for it: right there: the land of living.
We follow another Joshua. Jesus, the true and greater Joshua, tells us about enemies those of us who are growing his kingdom will face in the land of the living. In Matthew chapter 10 he says
“Look, I’m sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore be as shrewd as serpents and as innocent as doves. Beware of them, because they will hand you over to local courts and flog you in their synagogues. You will even be brought before governors and kings because of me, to bear witness to them and to the Gentiles.
Do you hear the courage Jesus entreats us, his followers growing his kingdom, to have? Brothers and sisters, he didn’t just ask us to do this. He did it for us.
He was sent out, a lamb among wolves. He was handed over to the synagogue, the local courts, and flogged. He was brought before the governor, and the king, bearing witness unto death. How did he have the courage to face betrayal, torture, and death at the hands of his enemies?
He sought God’s face. The night he was betrayed, he visited a garden. Why? To seek the face of his Father in prayer. And, Luke tells us, he was strengthened. He not only had courage to face his enemies, but courage to love his enemies. And that is the true application of seeking his face for courage. He gives us
-Courage to love our enemies. In Luke Chapter 6, Jesus says
“But I say to you who listen: Love your enemies, do what is good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.
The is the culmination of courage: the courage to love our enemies, to pray for those who mistreat us. How can we do this?
Seek his face. Seek to live in the presence of the Lord, filled with his Spirit, loving those who hate us, praying for those who persecute us.
(03:00)
We long to see each other face-to-face. The apostles said the same thing in their letters:
17 But as for us, brothers and sisters, after we were forced to leave you for a short time (in person, not in heart), we greatly desired and made every effort to return and see you face to face
1 Th 2:17
12 Though I have many things to write to you, I don’t want to use paper and ink. Instead, I hope to come to you and talk face to face so that our joy may be complete.
2 Jn 12.
We long to see each other face-to-face because it echoes our true desire to seek the Lord’ face. The best we can do in this world is to see dimly, as in a mirror…but one day we will see clearly…face-to-face.
Brothers and sisters, when the voice of our true enemy starts taking aim, we seek the face of God by declaring our trust in him. When we feel despair scrolling through the news of this world, we seek the Lord’s face for protection. And when we are tempted to respond in kind to those foes who bear false witness against us, we seek his face for courage to love them, to pray for them.
Maybe you’ve never taken action on the true desire of your heart, to see the face of the Lord. Maybe you are a follower of Christ who has let your fear make you angry at your foes. Bitter at false witnesses. Terrified of the election.
The first step is repentance. Yes, repentance. We, yes, every single person watching me, young and old, every one of us was an enemy of God. In Paul’s letter to the Roman church, he makes it plain:
But God proves his own love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us…For if, while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, then how much more, having been reconciled, will we be saved by his life.[3]
Jesus is the face of God. When you declare your trust in him, he protects you from your true enemy forever, and fills you with his Spirit to go out into the world with courage and love your enemies.
(!!!PRAY!!!)
Let us declare our trust as we sing.
[1] Christian Standard Bible (Nashville, TN: Holman Bible Publishers, 2020), Jos 1:9.
[2] Christian Standard Bible (Nashville, TN: Holman Bible Publishers, 2020), Lk 6:27–28.
[3] Christian Standard Bible (Nashville, TN: Holman Bible Publishers, 2020), Ro 5:8–10.