Turn with me in your Bible to Psalm chapter 27. Psalm chapter 27. As you’re turning there, something to consider. When I was a freshman at the University of Arkansas – this was back in 2002 – my parents had just moved from Fayetteville, Arkansas where I finished high school to Starkville, Mississippi. And so numerous times that year and the years that followed, I would road trip from Fayetteville, that seven hour trek from Fayetteville to Starkville. And so I would get my clothes and I would get the school work that I needed, and probably the most important this is I would load up my car with these things called CDs! If you’re young, you may not have heard of them, but this was kinda post-cassette tape. At least for me, this was pre-MP3. And so I would have a book of CDs in the passenger seat beside me. And of course on a seven hour road trip when you’re 18, the playlist is important. And the reason we listen to music on road trips is because music helps us pass the time, but it helps sustain us on the long journey.
And I bring that up because this summer in the evenings on Sunday nights we will be in a series on the Psalms. And one of the primary ways that the Bible talks about the Psalms, or sorry, one of the primary ways the Bible talks about the Christian life is this journey image. It’s like this road trip, this long road trip of following Jesus and following His ways. And that’s what we’ll see this summer. These psalms are the songs for the life of faith. And these songs will sustain us in our faith for the journey, for the long haul.
There are 150 psalms. This is the third longest book in the Bible after Jeremiah, after Genesis. It has the longest chapter in the Bible, chapter 119. It has the shortest chapter in the Bible, chapter 117. It is organized around five books. And so if you look at Psalm chapter 1, you see above it, it says, “Book One.” If you look, for example, at Psalm chapter 42 and you look above it, you’ll see that it says, “Book Two.” And so on and so forth. And this summer we’re going to be focused in the first book of Psalms on Sunday nights. And the Psalms function as a kind of school. They function as a school for the heart. They’re designed to have a formative influence on the affections. John Calvin famously said, he put it that, “The Psalms are an anatomy of all the parts of the soul.” An early church father, Athanasius, says this. “The Bible speaks to us. The Bible speaks to us, but the Psalms, the Psalms speak for us.” So the Psalms speak for us. They provide and teach us the language of the heart. And so the Psalms are this school or this teacher where you are invited to bring the real you. Not the Sunday you, not the dressed up you, but the real you. Just beyond the exterior. The real you. Every emotion, every experience on this road of faith.
And so tonight we are going to start. We are going to look at Psalm chapter 27. And before we jump in and read, let me pray for us. Let’s pray.
Our great God and heavenly Father, we pray that the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts would be pleasing and acceptable to You, O Lord our strength and our Redeemer. And we pray this in Jesus’ name, amen.
Psalm chapter 27, beginning in verse 1. This is God’s Word:
“A Psalm 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!”
Amen.
I want you to think tonight about three movies. I want you to think about Jurassic Park and ET and Hook. These three movies are some of cinema’s most enduring movies. I want you to think about what these three movies have in common – Jurassic Park, ET and Hook. First of all, they are directed by one of the most accomplished directors of all time, Steven Spielberg. Jurassic Park, ET and Hook were all directed by Spielberg. But secondly, what they have in common, they’re all about children. They’re all about children. Spielberg’s formative years as a child were fraught with tension and anxiety and conflict. When he was in high school, his parents got divorced; his dad moved out. And what he’s doing in these movies is he’s picturing and he’s building this big and scary world. And so for example, Spielberg has said that ET was inspired by his own parents’ divorce. And so he builds this big and broken world that can be really dangerous and really scary and really vast. And in his movies, children face these really scary things. And so they face things like dinosaurs and aliens and pirates. Or they face real life things like loneliness and divorce and death. And in all of the movies, there is a child in need of protection; there is a child who needs some adult, some man or woman to come and to take them and guide them out of the darkness, out of their fears, really to a place of joy.
Now why all of the talk about these old movies? Because tonight we’re talking about fear. Psalm 27 is a psalm about fear, and I know and you know that a lot of us came into this sanctuary tonight with very real problems. We’re no longer little children, but how many of us adults in this room are inwardly, silently crying out and afraid? We are all so afraid. Some have lost loved ones. Some are lonelier than they’ve ever been before. Some have real fears about work or in regards to their vocation. They are wondering, “When is it okay to let your dreams die?” Some have just about stopped praying. Some would say that their family is hanging together by a thread. Some would say that their work or their money or their livelihood is hanging together by a thread. And you see, the farther we go on this journey, the more danger we meet. And so fear is something that you never outgrow.
In fact, when we talk about fear it’s like talking to fish about water. It is, for so many of us, our natural habitat. In fact, one minister pointed out that the first sound you ever make is a cry. And he says, “Why does a baby make that sound? Are they cries of doubt? Is the baby thinking, ‘Is there a God?’ No. Are they cries of grief? No, a baby can’t process grief. But it’s a wail of fear. ‘What’s happening to me? Who are these people? Why is it cold? Where am I?’” It’s a cry of fear. We come into this world experiencing fear. And so it’s the water we swim in. It’s our natural habitat and it’s been around since we can remember. Fear of man. Fear of loss. Fear of failure. Do you know what you are afraid of? Do you know the fears underneath your fears? The Bible talks about fear a lot. The Bible says, “Do not fear.” The Bible says, “Perfect love casts out fear.” The Bible says, “God did not give us a spirit of fear.” The Bible says that we are not to fall back into fear. And David here, David is full of faults; he is full of folly. David was not without fear, but David here doesn’t let fear get the upper hand.
Look at the Lord’s Protection
And if you think that you have problems, David had problems. We don’t know the particular context of this psalm. There was probably an entire army of special ops, of Saul’s special ops that were coming after David. We don’t know, but David is fearful, but he has learned by faith to deal with his fear and he gives us a picture of moving from fear to faith. David says in Psalm 56, “When I am afraid, I will trust in you.” And so how do you move from fear to faith? We are going to look at four things tonight in this psalm. First, in verses 1 to 3, how do we move from fear to faith – by looking at the Lord’s protection. “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?” If you look back at verse 2, David describes his enemies as coming after him, assailing him to eat up his flesh. You go to verse 6; he says, “my enemies are all around me.” Verse 11, “my enemies are unleveling me, bearing false witness against me.” In verse 12, they are “breathing out violence.” Now again, fear is implied. Which one of us is without fear? Who doesn’t know what it is to wake up in the morning and for the anxieties of the day to rush upon your heart and to rush upon your mind? We are pressed with fear.
For so many of us, we are fear managers. We move from fear to fear to fear to fear, but the problem is, we can’t keep up with the threats. And my point is, what David is experiencing, this is real life for us. This is real life. David says at the end of verse 2, actually, that it’s his enemies who stumble and fall. And he says at the end of verse 3, he uses this big important word in the song, “yet.” He says, “Yet I will be confident.” So the fear is implied. He’s not saying, “I will be fearless.” There is plenty of reason for the fear that he feels but he says, “Yet I will be confident.”
So we have seen that David is not enthroning his fear but he’s also not stuffing it and he’s not suppressing it, but David is confident.
And his confidence comes from dwelling on these different images that he mentions. He says, “The Lord is my light. The Lord is my salvation. The Lord is my stronghold.” He says later in verse 5, “The Lord is my rock; of whom shall I be afraid?” And these images govern how he sees what’s before him. So light and salvation are in parallel here. They are related terms. He is my light. God is my light. I am in darkness without him. He helps me to see. He plucks me, He saves me from the darkness. He saves me from the depths of my sin. And then he says, “The Lord is my stronghold.” In other words, He is my refuge. Where else would I go? He is my protector. He protects me from the darkness. He protects me from the things that threaten me. He protects me from my sin. And so the Lord is a stronghold. He is a shelter.
And these are all images of trust. Light and salvation and stronghold and rock. David is saying that, “The things around me had gotten so big, and in my heart I let God get small. And I was afraid.” It’s like Richard Sibbes says – David grasped this, what Richard Sibbes said. That, “Christ, being our Friend, it’s no matter who is our enemy.” Christ, being our Friend, it is no matter who is our enemy. And so let me ask you this evening, in the midst of your fear, to whom can you trust? When disease is at your door and when sickness is at your door and when cancer is at your door, to whom can you trust? To whom can you trust when you have lost work, when you have lost money, when you have lost dreams? Do you turn to your network? Do you turn to your resources? To whom can you trust with your children? To whom can you trust with their health or their salvation, when they’re sick, when they’re lost, when they’re confused? To whom can you trust? And to whom can you trust with the darkness of your own heart? Don’t you see that David trusts, David turns to the Lord. “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?” So David moves from fear to faith first by looking at the Lord’s protection.
Gaze at the Lord’s Beauty
Second, by gazing at the Lord’s beauty. You see, David says in verse 4 there is this single focus that governs his life – “That I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life.” It’s like Dr. Harper prayed – Do we love Sundays? Do we love Sundays? Let it be said of us that nothing can keep us away from the worship of our King. One thing that David says – “that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord.” To gaze upon His beauty. My soul thirsts for the Lord. In a dry and weary land, I want more of the Lord.
I played wide-receiver on my high school football team and the receiver has to really work to learn the plays and a good receiver has the playbook on his bedside table and will stay after practice and work with the quarterback to make sure that the timing is right and that the rhythm is right and that the routes are right. And he does all of this work Mondays through Thursdays so that when he gets to Friday, when he gets to the game, he can be blissfully unconscious of what he is doing and he can just run his route; he can stop or run a slant or a fade or a flag – and this is gibberish to some of you! But he can run a drag or a comeback…I could keep going. But he wants to be blissfully unconscious of what he’s doing so that he can focus on his main purpose, and that is just catching the ball. And my coach used to say, “Go get six!” Go get a touchdown. That’s the main thing. It’s like what C.S. Lewis said – “You’re not dancing when you’re still counting the steps.” He went on to say, “A good shoe is one you don’t notice. Good reading becomes possible when you don’t consciously need to think about the eyes or the light or the print or the spelling.” And Lewis says, “The perfect church service would be one where we are almost unaware of it because our attention would be on God.”
You see, David says in verses 4 to 6 that this longing he has to be in the temple, in the tabernacle, in the tent, because that’s the place where God was. David is saying that worship, that corporate worship fixes his eyes on the Lord, on the beauty of the Lord, and not on his fears. You see, when we gaze upon the beauty of the Lord in worship we actually see the perfect love of God in Jesus Christ. We see His perfect love. And in the words of John, it “casts out our fears.” In other words, it relativizes our fears. It puts them in their proper place. Listen to how Augustine put it. “Christ is beautiful in heaven, beautiful on earth, beautiful in the womb, beautiful in His parents’ arms, beautiful in His miracles, beautiful under the scourge, beautiful when inviting to life, beautiful when laying down His life, beautiful in taking it up again, beautiful on the cross, beautiful in heaven.”
And so, beloved in Christ, are you gripped tonight by fear? Are you gripped by fear? And if so, whatever you are facing, whatever you are up against, think about the beauty of Jesus Christ tonight. Think about the beauty of Jesus. If you are afraid, think about the heart of Jesus tonight. He says, “Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me for I am gentle and lowly in heart.” If you are afraid, think about the humility of Jesus tonight. He laid aside His outer garments, and taking a towel, tied it around His waist and then He poured water into a basin and began to wash His disciples’ feet. If you are afraid tonight, think about Jesus in Gethsemane. He said, “Take this cup from Me. Not My will but Yours be done.” If you are afraid, think about the cross of Jesus. “For the joy set before Him, He endured the cross.” Or think about the way that Jesus was with His disciples. He said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see My hands. Put your hand and place it in My side. Do not disbelieve, but believe.” If you are afraid, think about how Jesus was with the outcasts and the outsider, with the sinner and the sufferer, when He said, “Come to Me all who labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest.”
You see, when you are afraid, isn’t it wonderful to think about Jesus? Isn’t it wonderful to think about the beauty of Jesus and the heart of Jesus, to think about Jesus at Calvary, to think about Jesus at Gethsemane, to think about how Jesus was with the outcast and the outsider, to think about how Jesus is with you. When you are afraid, you think about the beauty of Jesus. That’s the second thing – gaze at the Lord’s beauty.
Seek the Lord’s Face
Then the third thing, to move from fear to faith we have to seek the Lord’s face. We see this in verse 8. “You have said, ‘Seek my face.’ My heart says to you, ‘Your face, Lord, do I seek.’” In my role here at the church, I officiate a lot of weddings. And one of the things that I often say at rehearsals, and they take place right on this platform, is, I say to the groom and I say to the bride that when we get to the vows, I am talking, and first the groom and then the bride, you repeat after me, but don’t look at me! I say that over and over again. I’m talking – “in plenty and want, in joy and in sorrow, in sickness and in health” – but do not look at me. Look at your bride. Look at your groom. And I’ve gotten in the habit of just looking at my notes. I don’t want eye contact in the vows. I have no interest in any eye contact. And so, “in plenty and in want, in joy or in sorrow, in sickness or in health.” And I say often in the homily, I say to the bride and I say to the groom, those words are some of the most healing words that you will ever hear. They are some of the most healing words that anyone will ever say over you in your life – “in plenty or in want, in joy or in sorrow, in sickness or in health.”
And imagine in a wedding if the groom is giving those words but he’s looking everywhere but his bride’s face. Or if the bride is saying those words but she is looking everywhere but the groom’s face. That’s awkwardly impersonal. And you want the words, but you want their eyes. You want their face. You want their smile. And you see, God initiates this. Look in verse 8 again. God says to David, “You have said, ‘Seek my face.’” And David then replies, “My heart says to you, ‘Your face Lord, do I seek.’” So it’s a good reminder for us that our God, He doesn’t leave David at a distance. He says as well in verse 10, “Even if your parents forsake you, the Lord will take you in.” But it’s also a good reminder for our fearful hearts that God moves toward David first. “Seek my face.” He pursues you first. He comes after you first. Even in your fear, He initiates with you first. “Seek my face,” says your faithful God, the hound of heaven. God moves towards you first and He is speaking to you tonight through His Word saying, “Seek my face.” And the heart of faith that has ears to hear responds to this the way that David does. Look at how David responds. The heart of faith says, “Your face Lord, do I seek.” And so what David is saying here, he is talking about the pursuit of God by the heart, by the soul. He is talking about faith and he is talking about taking hold of God – tasting and seeing that He is good.
I think I have told this story before, but there is the story of a little boy whose mother died and after her death, for weeks this little boy was having trouble sleeping at night. And so every night he would make his way down into his dad’s room and into his dad’s bed to be near his dad. And so he would climb up into his dad’s arms and he would sleep with his dad. And truth be told, the dad couldn’t sleep either, but every time the dad turned over, the little boy would wake his dad up and he would turn him back. He would turn his dad back over. And the story goes that he would grab his dad’s cheeks and he would say, “I need your face. I need your face.”
And so can your heart say tonight, anew or afresh in response to the Lord coming after you, “Your face, Lord, do I seek”? Do you long for the face of God tonight? Do you hunger and thirst for Him? Do you know what it is to say, “Don’t leave, God”? Do you know what it is to say, “I don’t want what the broken cisterns have to offer, I don’t want to spend money for that which is not bread. I don’t want to labor for that which does not satisfy. Give me Jesus. In the morning when I rise, give me Jesus. In the morning when I rise, give me Him. I want the living God.”
Wait for the Lord’s Presence
So you move from fear to faith by seeking the Lord’s face, but fourth and finally, by waiting for the Lord’s presence. Verse 14 needs to be read again and again and slowly. “Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord!” And some of you are waiting for things that are hard to wait for. You’re waiting for a child to be born, or you’re waiting for a child to come home, like the prodigal, to profess faith. Or maybe you’re waiting for the end of loneliness. Or maybe you’re waiting for some sense of clarity and the waiting is painful. You’re waiting about work. You’re waiting about health, for bloodwork or your very life. Or maybe you’re waiting for God to restore something, to heal something, to take something away – some addiction or some burden – and it seems that God moves so slowly. And you know, you know all too well what the prophet Joel calls “the years the locusts have eaten.” David writes, “Wait. Wait for the Lord. Be strong and take courage.” And then he repeats it, “Wait for the Lord.”
That seems like an odd way to end this psalm because to this point David has been active, and so he’s looking and he’s dwelling and he’s gazing and he’s seeking. And then you get to verse 14 and we read, “Wait.” But you see, the ongoing character of a life of faith is shaped and formed as we submit to the Lord’s schedule, to the Lord’s calendar, to the Lord’s timetable. That’s why David is saying in verse 10, “Teach me Your way, O Lord,” because this is the level path. “Teach me Your way, O Lord,” because in this way is our life. And David can wait on the Lord only because of what David has done in the first nine verses as he looks to the Lord’s protection, as he gazes at the Lord’s beauty, as he seeks the Lord’s face. David comes to this place, he comes to this beautiful place, that in the face of his fears, he is recognizing his own limits. He knows that there is only so much that he can do and he comes to this place where he is confident, where he can be still and know that the Lord is God. “Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord!”
Let me close with this. Before I moved to Jackson in 2008, I served at the PCA church in Starkville, Mississippi, Grace Presbyterian Church, and I worked with the youth ministry for a few years. And during that time I became good friends with the RUF minister at Mississippi State named Nathan Tircuit. And one night I was at a friend from the church’s house for dinner with the Tircuits and a few other families and Nathan and his daughter, Kennedy, who was just a few years old at the time, they were out fishing. And Kennedy took a step back when Nathan was fixing her fishing pole off of the pier and she fell into the water. And Nathan said that he immediately heard the splash and that he could see her eyes in the water and he jumped in and got her and grabbed her and everything was okay. And a few weeks later, Nathan said that they were buckling their daughter, Kennedy, into her carseat and they were about to go back to that same friend’s house where she fell into the water. And he said that, as her dad, he felt right to tell her – she said, “Where are we going?” and he felt like he needed to tell her that we are going back to where she had fallen into the lake. And so he said, “Kennedy, we’re going back to that same place, that place where I jumped into the water and got you.” And Kennedy replied, “We should bring some more clothes just in case I fall in!”
And I love that story. It’s a beautiful moment because all that she wanted, she just wanted some dry clothes. She had confidence in her father. She might have brought fear, but she had confidence. She knew that her dad would be there for her and with her, that he wouldn’t lose her, that he wouldn’t leave her, that he wouldn’t fail her or forsake her. When you get God’s protection and God’s beauty and God’s face, do you see how that would settle your fearful, anxious heart? It’s in the darkness, in the pit, in the valley, in the valley of the shadow of death that He is with you. So your heart might know that He is there, especially there, where you are most prone to fear, that your Father speaks over you, His child, and He says, “I’m never going to leave you. I’m never going to forsake you. Do not fear.”
“The Lord is my light and my salvation; of whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?” That’s an invitation to all of us tonight. Let me pray.
Our God of all grace, we thank You for Your Word to us tonight. We pray that You would press it down deep into our hearts. We pray that You would help us to look to Your protection, to Your beauty, to Your face, and that You would settle our fearful, anxious hearts tonight. We pray in Jesus’ name, amen.