Psalm 27
Download MP3Hey. Good morning, everybody. My name's Thomas Ritchie, and I'll be preaching this morning. So today, we are going to conclude our summer series looking at the Psalms, by looking at Psalm 27. And I've really enjoyed this series, because the Psalms are very personal.
Thomas Richie:Each preacher has had the opportunity to pick a psalm that's been meaningful at a different time in their life, and we learn a little bit about one another as we learn about God's word. And Psalm 27 is certainly a favorite of mine, and has been for a while, a place where I go back year after year. And I go to the Psalms to find in them the tools for expressing my heart to God in different seasons. Sometimes finding a song that expresses exactly how I feel in the moment, but more often finding a song that teaches my heart how to respond. Dietrich Bonhoeffer reflected on this issue in a little book that he wrote called The Introduction to the Psalms.
Thomas Richie:I commend it to you. It's real short. You can read it in a sitting. But he writes in that book that it does not matter whether the Psalms express exactly what we feel in our hearts in the moment that we pray. Perhaps it is precisely the case that we must pray against our hearts in order to pray rightly.
Thomas Richie:And later he would write, not the poverty of our heart, but the richness of God's word ought to determine our prayer. And Psalm 27 is certainly a place where we find the richness of God's word that teaches our hearts to pray. Let's jump in. I'm gonna read it, for us, and then I'm gonna pray. Psalm 27, a psalm of David.
Thomas Richie: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 encamped against me, my heart shall not fear though war arise against me. Yet I will be confident.
Thomas Richie:One thing I have 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, 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.
Thomas Richie:I will sing and make melody to the Lord. Hear, oh Lord, when I cry aloud, and be gracious to me and answer me. You have said, seek my face, and my heart says to you, your face, Lord, do I seek. Hide not your face from me. Turn not your servant away in anger, oh you who have been my help.
Thomas Richie:Cast me not off. Forsake me not, oh 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.
Thomas Richie: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. This is the word of the Lord.
Thomas Richie:Please pray with me. God, we thank you for the richness of your word. We thank you for how you reveal yourself to us. And, God, we are especially grateful that you reveal that you are good. That you are kind, loving.
Thomas Richie:That you bring us joy and safety. God, that you are what our hearts long for. There is no one else that can satisfy us apart from you. And so, God, we depend upon you this morning. Would you come and be with us?
Thomas Richie:Would you reveal your character? I am not equal to that task, God. It's a weight that is too heavy and I cannot lift it. So we all, myself included, depend upon your work. We know that you will do this for the glory of your name.
Thomas Richie:In Christ's name, we pray. Amen. Psalm 27 is a bit of a scholarly puzzle. We can place many psalms in David's life, but not this one. We don't know when he wrote it, what he was feeling at the time, or what was going on.
Thomas Richie:David could have been a young man, barely more than a boy, fighting the king of Israel. He could have written this psalm when he himself was king, perhaps at the height of his powers. Maybe he wrote it as a man broken and caught in sin. Perhaps when his family was being torn apart. Perhaps in his old age, as he's facing mortality.
Thomas Richie:In fact, many scholars see in this Psalms sorry, see in this Psalm 2 Psalms that have been stuck together. The first half and the second half, because the tone of the beginning is so different from the tone of the end. We're gonna look at that a little bit more later. But for now, I wanna take this psalm as we find it. A psalm that has both highs and lows.
Thomas Richie:A psalm that speaks into the tension that you and I feel in our daily lives. Because we live our lives both in major and minor keys, this psalm is tough to pigeonhole, and it speaks to us no matter how we're feeling. Like many Psalms, Psalm 27 begins with a sort of summary or thesis statement in the first verse and it's this great triumphant statement about what God is like that God is our light and our salvation and our stronghold but interspersed in that verse somewhat needlessly it might seem David's talking about how he's not afraid it's a little bit odd to put it in there almost like someone has given you a phone call that starts off with the words everything's okay when you get that phone call do you feel like everything is okay right I mean just talking about fear makes us think about reasons to be fearful and we see in the song that David had lots of reasons to be fearful. In verse 2, we see that evil men are attacking him, and he describes them in this graphic terms as trying to eat his flesh. This is not some faceless enemy or a natural disaster, but it is David's particular adversaries, and particular adversaries and foes.
Thomas Richie:Indeed, even, like, the hopeful turn at the end of verse 2 when he says, it is they who stumble and fall, gives us this sense of almost hand to hand combat, where his enemies are so close that whoever slips first is the one who will be lost. Verse 3 then zooms out. David is now facing an army, and then a war. The size of his problems keeps growing, and their immediacy is not diminishing. And yet, at every turn, David is confident, and David is not afraid.
Thomas Richie:He repeats it over and over again so that we will want to ask, Why? And not just that. The structure of the first part of this psalm actually has this same sense of rising action in it. The Psalm is written in what's called antiphonal phrases, phrases that kinda speak back and forth to each other. And in Hebrew, each of the antiphonal phrases in verse 1 has 5 words.
Thomas Richie:And then in verse 2, it has 6. In verse 3 it has 7 the Psalm is is building it is growing and in the same way that the language is giving us a picture of this growing problem and this growing confidence just the number of words is doing the same thing everything about this psalm is straining and causing us to ask this question why in these growing disasters does David have confidence and then David raises the tension yet further and he says I have confidence because of one thing one thing what is it it's not what we would expect There's this drastic shift of tone, and David says, the one thing that is the source of my confidence, the one thing that I've asked for, the one thing that I seek, it's just the presence of God. I want to be with the Lord. I want to dwell in the house of the Lord, to contemplate the Lord's beauty, to inquire, to pray to the Lord in His temple. In an instant the language of combat is is just gone the brass instruments are quiet and it's all strings and woodwinds David turns from his problems to the Lord He dwells on who the Lord is, and he's reflecting not on the power of God or the righteous judgment or vengeance of God, but on the beauty of God.
Thomas Richie:The nearness of God. In the face of all this chaos and danger, David says, I just want to be found in God's presence. And the next two verses are gonna build on this idea. In verse 5, we have this tender language of touch. It's very intimate.
Thomas Richie:When, David says that God will shelter, conceal, and cover him. And this language of lifting him up is almost parental, that a like a parent lifting a small child out of danger and setting him in safety. It harkens back to Psalm 23 when it or, yeah, it sorry. It harkens back to Psalm 91. And we'll talk about Psalm 23 in a minute.
Thomas Richie:But Psalm 91 is full of this language. We don't have time to read it today, but the whole thing is about being held safely in the Lord's presence, while war and death and pestilence rage all around. Verse 6 is slightly different. Instead of just emphasizing God as this near source of comfort, it talks about how God calls us to worship in the midst of our enemies. We have this move from a survival mindset to a worship mindset.
Thomas Richie:The enemies that were present at the beginning of the psalm are still present here, and they are still surrounding David. But David says that his head is lifted up above them, and he is in the tent of the Lord. Even in the midst of his enemies, his focus has shifted from what's going on with them to what is going on with the Lord's work. Here, as it says in Psalm 23, Lord, you prepare a table for me in the presence of my enemies. I feast, not because they're gone, but because the Lord is present.
Thomas Richie:My problems may remain, but, God, you are here, and that changes everything. These verses form the core of the Psalm, and I think especially verse 4. The one thing that David asks is that he might be where God is. God, can I be in your loving presence? Can I be with you?
Thomas Richie:I want to see you and to worship you more than I want to be delivered out of this problem. I want to be with you more than I want a solution. He's treating God, not as a means to an end, but as the end himself. And we can pray with David, as in our opening scripture, that better is one day with the Lord than a 1000 days spent elsewhere. We can pray, as in Psalm 63, that the steadfast love of the Lord is better than life.
Thomas Richie:We can pray with Asaph in Psalm 73 when he says, whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my life and my portion forever. David has confidence because his desires are fixed on being with the Lord. His confidence is not the absence of fearful things or difficult things.
Thomas Richie:His confidence is the presence of God. This is my point, so I'm going to say it again. David's confidence is not in the absence of fearful things or difficult things. His confidence is the presence of God. David has so fixed his eyes and his heart on the Lord that he has peace in the midst of danger and in the midst of things that are frightening.
Thomas Richie:I love this reflection. One thing I have asked of the Lord, But careful students of the Psalms could have an objection here. They might say, look. I I hear you say that David's prayer is one thing I've asked of the Lord, but I've read the Psalms. I think he asked for some other stuff too.
Thomas Richie:He does. He asked for a whole lot of things in this Psalm, and in every other Psalm that he wrote. He's full of constant requests and petitions. So it's not that he has only one prayer, but when he says, One thing I've asked of the Lord, he means that prayer is foundational to all of his petitions. It undergirds and supports all the other things that he asked for.
Thomas Richie:It is their foundation. And this point is really important because we all ask God for lots of things when we pray. And we do that because Jesus told us to. In the Lord's Prayer, as Jesus is teaching us to pray, he teaches us to pray for provision, for forgiveness, for deliverance from evil. We are to pray without ceasing.
Thomas Richie:In all things, through prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, we are supposed to make our request known to God. So praying these things is right and necessary. But remember also how the Lord's prayer starts. Our father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. The focus is on the Lord, on his holiness, and on his relationship to us.
Thomas Richie:And when we recognize that our desires, and indeed our very lives, are directed towards the Lord, our other petitions naturally fall into their proper place. But I want to look briefly at the rest of this Psalm, because this second half is very different than the first half. This, you know, a lot of scholars think it's a separate Psalm. It's just kind of been tacked on the end. We'll find the same theme, but the tone is very different.
Thomas Richie:In verse 7, David is crying aloud. He's asking God to hear him and to be gracious to him. And in verse 8, we see David feeling divided. He says, God, you have told me to seek your face. But David doesn't say, I seek your face with all that I am.
Thomas Richie:He responds by saying, my heart says to you, your face do I seek. It's as if he's at war within himself. He has divided desires. It's like the prayer that we keep looking at in Mark that says, Lord, I believe, Help my unbelief.' Or, 'I believe, but all of me doesn't believe.' And we can tell that David is starting to lack confidence because we see the language shift in verse 9. Instead of talking about how he's going to seek the Lord or what part of him is going to seek the Lord's face, we see him begging God, don't hide your face from me.
Thomas Richie:All of a sudden, he's worried that God's gonna be angry with him. He's saying, God, you have been my help. Don't stop. I need you. I'm not sure that I can hold up my end of the bargain.
Thomas Richie:I need you maybe to hold up mine as well. Even the people who were supposed to love him unconditionally, his mom and dad, have abandoned him. And if the Lord does not take him in, then he has nobody. In verses 11 and 12 the enemies that have been popping up from time to time in this Psalm are back but does David still sound as confident as he did in the first verses No longer is he interrupting himself saying, I am not afraid, yet I will have confidence. All of a sudden, it seems like God delivering him over into the hands of his adversaries is a thing that might happen.
Thomas Richie:He's asking God not to because he's afraid that God will. And then out of nowhere, like a bolt of lightning, you get verse 13. I believe that I shall look upon the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. It's this desperate, almost defiant, profession of faith. And it's not connected to any particular act that he thinks God's gonna do.
Thomas Richie:God, are you gonna take me in? God, are you gonna deliver me? God, are you gonna let me see your face? He doesn't know when or how those things are going to happen. It's just this sudden certainty that he will be with the Lord, and that he will see his goodness in the land of the living.
Thomas Richie:We can think of this as the 3rd peak or summit in the psalm. The first peak is in verse 1, and it's this kind of logical statement, the attributes of God and what that means for us. So David is reflecting on the Lord's goodness in his mind. And then in verse 4, he says what David will do. I will seek the Lord.
Thomas Richie:It's this statement of will or intention. But in verse 13, he doesn't understand, And he doesn't seem like he's in control. And yet David still has faith. Verse 13, this third peak, is this cry of faith. Despite what David sees on the outside, what he feels on the inside, and what he fears about the future.
Thomas Richie:He believes that he will be with the Lord, and even see the beauty of the Lord in the land of the living. But notice what he doesn't say. David does not say, God, all I see now is goodness in the midst of my suffering in the land of the dying. He doesn't say, Lord, I get it. I understand your purpose, and I see exactly what you are trying to accomplish in and through me in this season.
Thomas Richie:In fact, he says quite the opposite. Verse 14, this ending of the Psalm, continues this theme of desperation. David is all but shouting at himself. Wait. Be strong.
Thomas Richie:Take courage. One day, you will see the Lord work. His promises are true, oh my soul, even though I don't see how. I don't see now, but I will. As it says in Psalm 130, out of the depths I cry to you, oh my Lord.
Thomas Richie:My soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen for the morning. More than watchmen for the morning. For David, everything may be darkness, but he strains to the east to see that light, that dawn that he knows is coming, though he's not sure when. Even in his anguish, David does not know the when of his deliverance. He does not know the how of his deliverance, but he knows who.
Thomas Richie:He will wait upon the Lord, and that is enough. Knowing the Lord's goodness is enough to give him the confidence to say that he will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. So, yeah, the second part of the Psalm is grittier and it's messier, but it leads us to the same place. It teaches us the same lesson. David's singular hope is that he will see the goodness of God intimately, up close, and in a way that saves him.
Thomas Richie:Sometimes he feels confident. Sometimes he feels overwhelmed. And though he has no reason to fear, sometimes he is still afraid. The point is not at all about David's feelings, because his feelings are up and down just like ours are. The point is that God's promises are true, and that in his presence, there is fullness of joy.
Thomas Richie:So by giving us these 2 different pictures of seeking the Lord in one Psalm, Psalm 27 gives us prayers that can teach our hearts to seek the Lord in all seasons. I've made it, for myself a bit of a mantra, to say one thing I have asked of the Lord, because it reminds me that the things that feel important at different times in my life really aren't that important. I tend to go after different things. Excuse me. I I tend to get caught up.
Thomas Richie:I get tend to get angry or frustrated. Sometimes I don't get what I want. And in those days, it's helpful to be able to remind myself that the one thing that I've asked of the Lord is that I can be with him. I just want you, God. I I don't have to have these other things.
Thomas Richie:And I find that that prayer centers me. It takes me off my little cardboard throne, and it puts me back where I want to be, looking up at the Lord, remembering that His purposes are my hope, and that He Himself is the source of peace. And I want to be able to pray that prayer in harder and harder circumstances. That I, like David, can one day say, I don't care if you deliver me. What I want is to be with you.
Thomas Richie:My confidence is not what you do, God. It's who you are. It's what it's like to be with you. I agree with what Paul says in Philippians 3 when he says, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord. For his sake, I have suffered the loss of all things, and I count them as rubbish in order that I might gain Christ and be found where?
Thomas Richie:In him. I long to say those words and to have them be true of me. But maybe you can relate. My life is still full of competing desires. I'm very much still in school.
Thomas Richie:And I want to speak to people who are suffering, because suffering is the hardest school of all. And one of the things I've learned this summer is that there's a suffering's a question of when, not if. We are either suffering, or we soon will be. And there indeed are people here in this church family who are suffering profoundly. Sickness for yourself or in a loved one.
Thomas Richie:A relationship that is at or past the breaking point. There are too many things to list. I have 2 things that I want to say to you. The first is this. God is not judging your prayers.
Thomas Richie:All this highfalutin talk about, I just wanna be in the presence of God, might not be your reality, because you can't see past tomorrow. You can't see past the next appointment, the next test result, the next interaction. And that's okay it's alright we are human and God made us to encounter hard things in life and sometimes it just washes over us what I would urge you to do is to direct your heart towards the Lord pour out how you feel what you want what you think to him even if it's messy even it's the this weird chain of petitions that are contradictory or it just feels like complaining or it feels like you're just talking God wants to hear that he wants us to direct our lives toward him But I also want to say this. That just as Bonhoeffer says that the richness of our prayers comes not from our hearts, but from God's word. Hear this.
Thomas Richie:There is no greater comfort that I or anybody else can offer you besides the eternal, abiding, and loving presence of God. We can pray for healing, but I cannot promise it. I can pray for recovery, and I can't promise it. I cannot promise that things will get better, that the arrow of your life will point up and up forever. I can't promise that your career is going to get out of the ditch, or that a relationship is going to be restored.
Thomas Richie:In fact, if your life is built on those things, I can say with confidence that they will fail you sooner or later. Because we are human, our glory will fade. Our powers diminish. And one day, you and me and all of us will take our last breath. What's our prayer with that breath?
Thomas Richie:What's your hope? It is this. That in Christ, you will dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of your life, and that you will behold the goodness of God in the land of the living. For in Christ, we have hope that surpasses death. In John 11, Lazarus, Jesus' friend, has just died, and Jesus arrives 4 days later.
Thomas Richie:He meets Lazarus's sister, Martha, on the road, and she says to him, If you had been here, Jesus, my brother wouldn't have died. And Jesus says, Your brother will rise again. And she responds with this it's a great statement of faith. She says, I know that my brother will be raised in the resurrection on the last day. And, you know, not many people are that with it 4 days into their morning.
Thomas Richie:And yet Jesus kind of speaks back to her very directly. He says, I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live. Jesus says the resurrection's not an idea. It's not a concept.
Thomas Richie:It's not some future event. It's it's me. It's Jesus. He's standing right there. You are looking the resurrection in the face.
Thomas Richie:He refers to himself as life, but life with the definite article. The life to be with Christ is to be in the land of the living. For in Jesus, all the fullness of the presence of God was pleased to dwell. And Jesus is Emmanuel, God come to be with us. David was under when he was writing Psalm 27, he's in the ceremonial law, the temple worship system, the tabernacle.
Thomas Richie:He thought the presence of God was a place that he had to go. He would have to be in the tent of the Lord. But we now get to see better than David could. For we know that God has come down to be with us. To be even like us in the midst of our fears and our weakness and our enemies and our struggles and ultimately in our death.
Thomas Richie:In Jesus, we have assurance that we will be with the Lord, for the Lord has come all the way to us. He has made a way for us by his death, and his resurrection is a sure and physical demonstration that death is not the end. Even though we die, yet shall we live. For just as Christ was raised, so too shall we be raised in him. And not just for the days of your life on earth, but for 10000 years.
Thomas Richie:And for 10000 times 10000, we can say together that we shall behold the goodness of God in the land of the living. Please pray with me. God, our hearts are so easily distracted, and are so often divided. We turn after lesser things. Would you reveal yourself to us?
Thomas Richie:Would you make our hearts believe, as we're going to sing later? Would you remind us that you, have come to be with us, and that your presence is not only our comfort in tribulation, but is the great and abiding hope of our lives. That though now we labor, we will be with you. And would you fill us with that assurance in a way that affects how we live now. How we love one another.
Thomas Richie:How we are confident in going forth into a world that needs redemption. God, make your goodness clear to us that we might see the person of Christ and worship him. In his name, amen.
