This morning, the psalm we're considering is Psalm 27. I will come back to Psalm 22 in two weeks. But I want to move ahead to Psalm 27 this morning. As we're considering the psalms, if you're visiting with us, we're working through the Psalter here and there. And this morning is Psalm 27. This is a psalm of David. Let's give our attention to the Word of 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? 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 rise against me, yet I will be confident. One thing I have 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 take your heart courage. And your heart take courage. Wait for the Lord. May the Lord bless the hearing this morning of His Word. Everyone today is looking for a fulfilled and a prosperous and a happy life, aren't they? It's kind of the pursuit of mankind. That's what we see play out before us. That regardless of age, really what we want is what we put down in our founding documents. We want a life of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. This is it. That pretty much summarizes what we're after, doesn't it? And everyone today seems to be offering us that key of success. They tell us that if we accept their answer, we will achieve this bliss, this happiness, this thing that we're all searching for. For all the books, however, and all the talk show hosts and all these guys, all of the remedies being offered, no one has been able to overcome the problem of pain and suffering, have they? This hasn't happened. Can't do it. Even when we've achieved the best medicine that we can possibly achieve. I would air Abounding Grace, of course, up north. And right after my program, it would be interesting. I would present Reformed Doctrines. And then a guy would get on right after me. And he would tell his listeners that God doesn't want any of you to suffer sickness. God doesn't want any of you to be financially poor. God has a great plan for your life. God wants to make us all rich and the way we achieve it is by having faith. I heard about that man not too long ago. He got sick. He got sick. And his whole message turned on his head. I have no idea how he goes through the sickness that he now faces. I have no idea how he processes it in light of a long life of telling people that message which has been such a prevalent message in our country. We all want the story that ends well. I mean, that's what sells today. That's what gets the ear. Things go bad. The best movies, the best novels, the best story that wins the day is the truth. That all that is well, that ends well. That's the thing that we're all looking for. You know by now that the Psalms are honest about life. You know by now that the Psalms are presenting to us something that's a lot different than the conventional wisdom of this world. It's telling us a different story, isn't it? An entirely different story. They don't sugarcoat the problem of sorrow. They don't sugarcoat the problem of sin and struggle and pain and affliction. Nor do they promise that everything in this life will go well. In fact, what we see is the opposite often in many of these psalms. But they do provide for us God's answer in the struggle. They do provide for us perspective. They do provide for us the kind of approach to the Lord through it and His answer to us in the struggle that is indeed and real satisfaction. Real satisfaction. They're beautiful. And Psalm 27, I'm sure for many of you, is one of those that stands out in its beauty, doesn't it? The story here is kind of backwards, if you look at it. If you heard the reading, you would have picked up on something that actually, the whole flow of this psalm, things go from good to bad, or from bad to worse, however you want to look at it. And by the end of the psalm, there's no answer. to whatever he's going through. He is not delivered from it. The end of the psalm ends with what? It ends with a consolation that he has to wait on the Lord on this one. He has to wait. And he has to take courage in waiting and trusting the Lord through it. That's the kind of psalm that would never sell books at Barnes & Noble, by the way. Never sell, would it? That's not the kind of story we like. But it's the kind of story the Bible is presenting to us because it's the story of faith, isn't it? It's the story of trust, no matter the circumstances. And Psalm 27 is shown to us like that this morning in a very beautiful, and if you see the structure, effective way that I hope you take with you in whatever you're going to face in the future. You'll notice it's broken up into two separate sections here. And in the first section of the psalm, we have Him, even in the struggle, full of confidence and joy and faith and trust. And by the end of the first section, He's shouting for joy. It's what we all want. It's beautiful. Let's look at these two sections this morning. Look at verse 1. The Lord is my light and my salvation. Whom shall I fear? The Lord is the strength, the stronghold of my life. of whom shall I be afraid? I love that statement because essentially the psalm is confronting for us this morning fear. It is showing us the problem of fear. And you'll notice that it again, like many of the psalms, is put in the language of enemies. Here he's being attacked by certain enemies. And over and over we are seeing this, this problem of enemies surrounding God's people and causing a great amount of distress. It's no little thing, is it? And here we are, what we witnessed this morning with the Eagans and their children. And they stood up and they said, we are making a profession and a reaffirmation of what we believe in this dark world. And look at how dark everything is. We heard from Romans 3 last time that these enemies are quick to shed blood. Destruction and misery are their ways. And the way of peace they do not know. What a contrast. God's people as lambs, as His sheep, in the midst of that kind of description of the wicked. Of the wicked. What makes this particular psalm so interesting this morning though is that David is here strengthening himself for what is coming. And I love to emphasize that because he knows something awful is coming. Now, I don't know if you've been through this situation. Some of you certainly have. But there are moments you look ahead and you may not know what the particular outcome will be, but you're seeing the impending storm and you know that if things go the way that it should go or the way it could go, how it might turn out, this is going to be one awful thing to have to face. That's fear. Fear is not so much what we're presently dealing with today. Fear is looking ahead to what might happen and processing the ifs and the what ifs if the worst happens. And we think about the worst happening and if that happens, how in the world am I going to face it? Well, what David is doing in this psalm up front is strengthening himself for what he sees dimly is coming. Now, I don't know if we think about doing that or how that happens. We're going to consider that here. But I want you to think about the blessing of what's being shown to you and why the Lord wants to teach you about this this morning. David begins by saying, the Lord is my light. The Lord is really what he's emphasizing here. He's my joy. He's my happiness. He has lightened my paths. This is what I've known from Him. And the thing we're struck with is confidence that is breathed out of this psalm. Confidence in the Lord. I've always been moved by Matthew 24 that Jesus would describe some of the worst possible things that could happen on this earth. Remember what He said, that there's going to be false teachers deceiving many. And He says there's going to be wars and rumors of wars and there's going to be famines and there's going to be pestilences. There's going to be earthquakes in various places. All this is going to happen. The love of many is going to grow cold. And you know, that's a tough message to swallow. But in the middle of that, he said something. What did he say? Do not fear. Now, if I said that today in my own authority, I'd be a crazy man. But if the Son of God says it, He means it. And you see, what Psalm 27 is showing us is exactly this is where David has come. David has come to this place, you'll notice this, of the issue of fear confronting it. And he is calmed. What a perspective, isn't it? He describes in verse 2 something similar to what we considered last week in Psalm 18. He looks over his past and one of the ways that he deals with the current struggle is that he rehearses all that the Lord has done for him in the past, all that He has been for him in the past when the enemies came up in the past to eat up my flesh. Guess what happened to them? They stumbled and fell. Every time. This is what I've known. They did not overpower me. The Lord sustained me. Here I am. And so twice in the beginning part of this psalm, David says, I will not fear. I will not fear. It's a crucial moment of the psalm because the temptation in the midst of sorrow, in the midst of hardship, And what we have seen before, we fear through it. We saw this in Psalm 13 that God's mercies and God's love has departed from us. You remember Psalm 13. Why basically have you cast me off? We see this question in this altar often. And here's the remedy. The remedy is when we come into these points of trial and fear and doubt, what often happens is that we begin to think that our present circumstances indicate that God is angry with us. That God's wrath has fallen on us. When the whole truth of the matter is, David begins to look back and he says the truth of the matter is every bit of life, the whole way through, He's been a shelter. He's been a shelter. He has set His love upon me. Notice the confidence all that's here in the first part. It's beautiful, isn't it? If armies encamp against me, if war rise up against me, I'm going to be confident. I'll be confident. The Lord is my light and my salvation. That's my confidence. That's what I know. That's what I've received. He lightens my path in the darkness. He has saved me. My whole life is lived in His strength. All of my darkness in this life is light now. So, in all of the instability, no matter how great the threatening danger, I trust. And at the end of verse 3, this is what he says, I will be confident in the midst of these trials I will rely on the Lord who is my strength. And you say, Pastor, I'm getting tired of hearing this over and over. Because I don't really experience that. Are these guys just super giants? Why is it that, you know, this is great, but I struggle with seeing this. Is this just something I have to work up within me? That's the question, isn't it? Is this something that I just have to kind of get on my own? Where do you think the psalmist gained this perspective? Where did he come to this kind of confidence? in life? It's an important question, isn't it? I was sitting with a guy this past week at Barnes & Noble and sometimes I have to get out of my little cave over here. And I have to go out in the public just to breathe. And this guy sees my Bible and he says, what are you doing? And I says, well, I'm writing a sermon. And he said to me, I'd like to talk to you about that. And I thought, well, this is an amazing moment. So I said, well, let's talk about it. And so we began to talk. And he says, are you looking at this mess all around us? And he says, you have everyone believing whatever they want today. And there's nothing uniform. Well, there seems to be nothing uniform today. No one agrees on everything. Everyone is fighting on everything. And he says, I believe in the Lord, but I'm on this path, I think, to agnosticism because, you know, I just can't seem to find. And all there is is conflict. And he says, at one time I had this childlike faith. It seemed it was so simple. I almost feel like ignorance was bliss. And he says, I started reading all the philosophers and I'm just thoroughly confused now. I'm thoroughly confused. I struggle with what used to be so clear to me now isn't clear to me. I have a lot to say about childlike faith. The kind of faith that Mason today when I said, you're one of the Lord's and he looks at me. That kind of childlike faith. But this man had come to a kind of crisis of faith. And so the summary of the conflict was, well, it went like this. I found the pearl. I'm now in conflict. I'm losing the pearl. What would David have said? I found the pearl too. And I'm confident in the Lord. But let me tell you how I kept that. He rescued me. He saved me. But then in verse 4, He describes one great desire. One great desire of His heart. One thing I've desired of the Lord. That thing will I seek that I may dwell in the house of the Lord forever. all the days of my life to behold the beauty of the Lord. And the translation here, our translation, ESV says, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in His temple. I found the light. I found the light. And here he describes it. When I found this, my greatest pursuit in life, my greatest passion in life, My greatest desire in life was this. I want to dwell in the Lord's house all of my days. He's not in heaven yet, is he? He's not in heaven. This is thrown commentators for a loop. It's fun to read commentators on this kind of stuff. Commentators are thrown for a loop. What does he mean dwell in the house of the Lord? Most say, well, this has nothing to do with a literal desire for God's house. God doesn't dwell on a house made with hands. David could call upon God anywhere. This is describing something spiritual, they say. That we can discover anew God's presence and refreshment wherever we are. I would suggest that was the very problem with the guy at Barnes & Noble. He was trying it. And it wasn't working. What are people after today? Well, they're on a quest to find God, aren't they? Everyone's on a quest to find God. The psalmist here is describing what he has come and where he has found it. And it's really beautiful. I love how Luther, you know how Luther translated verse 4? I just throw it out. I don't know that I really agree with it, but it's interesting. One thing I've desired of the Lord, that will I seek after, to dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life. And here's what he said. Behold the beautiful services of the Lord. Now, it may be a bit of a stretch, but he got to the thought of it. He got to the point of it. Did you notice in verse 4 and 5, you have temple, you have dwelling, you have tabernacle. You have all of this language. Now, we met this in Psalm 84 already, but what we find in the Psalms is this desire. And this desire is that they are expressing to be in the physical location of the courts of the Lord. They're saying this over and over. There's no other way you can read it. Does anything happen there? The psalmist gives us a glorious reason. He says, I want to behold, gaze upon the beauty of the Lord. This is why I delight to come. I get to look on the pleasantness of the Lord. It's a neat word. It's a really interesting word. And then in verse 8, you'll notice, lo and behold in this psalm, that he mentions God's face. No one has seen God at any time. And here, David is saying, I get to look upon the beauty of the Lord and then the face of God is mentioned. I've tried to emphasize this before. But there's something about coming, isn't there? It wasn't the temple, of course, itself. But the temple was an image of something. the temple was an image of something that Moses had to pattern on the mountain off something in heaven, wasn't it? And they understood that God was revealing Himself in that temple because that's where God was. You know what the New Testament says about the temple? Well, of course, we know that Jesus spoke in a different way about the temple. He spoke about the temple being the what? The body of Christ. His body. And where that body gathered, the Lord was there. Richard Sibbes once said, particular visible churches under visible pastors now are God's tabernacle. Can we say that? Can we say that? In 2 Corinthians 4, Paul would say that where Jesus is preached, something is happening. And he made a very beautiful statement under the inspiration of the Spirit that I believe ties to Psalm 27 when he said, God commands light to shine out of darkness. Think of it. The Lord is my light. God commands light to shine out of darkness who is shown in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. In other words, I get to come and I get to gaze upon the beauty of Christ and His grace to me. And there I get to inquire about His love coming out of this sad life. My great burden has been to recover this. That there is something about coming to the Lord's house in worship that we have lost today. And I would love to say it in every which way I could, but it comes down to the same thing. There's an image here of spiritual things, isn't there? And God reveals Himself in His Word in a very special and powerful way. You can't get that anywhere else in this kind of power that it's given. And here in the Psalms we're seeing, if we believe that these are the emotions of the Lord Jesus Christ, here we have the single great desire of Christ set before us, which He showed in His ministry, which He demonstrated in His ministry here. Where was He always on the Sabbath? What did He long for? I want to be there. My desire is to be before the Lord. This is how I hold on. And I offer the sacrifices of joy in His tabernacle. I will sing, yes, I will sing praises to the Lord. You know what we're seeing today with young people? We are seeing today that between the ages of 18 and 33, they have absolutely no direction in life. It's never been like it. to this degree. And they say that in droves they're leaving the churches. And this is not a URC problem particularly. This is not a particular denominational problem. This is a wide phenomenon in every single denomination today. They're all leaving. And everyone tries to scramble for the answer to that and where to put the blame on that. Striking to me at times of funerals, I've had a whole bunch of funerals I've done up north and it was striking to me how many young people at the funerals had abandoned the church and weren't at all even in the church anymore. And I think of something like Psalm 18. A man who isolates himself seeks his own desire. He rages against all wise judgment. A fool has no delight in understanding. but in expressing his own heart. The young people today don't know where they're going, what they're doing, and everyone's searching for meaning, lo and behold. Everyone's searching for an answer, lo and behold. And I want to tell the young people, I want to say, look at what's described here. Look at the beauties of what's described here. Are you searching today? Are you struggling? And I want to tell the parents at least something that I experience is that when parents speak positively about the ministry, it affects the children. When parents speak negatively about the ministry, it affects the children. And a positive view of what we're doing here when you as parents have tasted the goodness of the Lord and you're speaking about it and you're talking about it to them and you're showing this one desire as your delight, I promise you it will affect the next generation. The Bible is telling us this over and over and over. Blessed is the one you choose and bring near to dwell in your courts. We shall be satisfied with the goodness of your house, the holiness of your temple. Value the Lord's house. If nothing is happening here today, then I would say we have no reason to gather. But that's not what the Bible is telling us. Don't neglect it. Something's happening. and what a place to be when it does. What do you think are the consequences of this kind of desire? This is where I want to go with this this morning. Why is this so important? We always have to answer that. You know, the old way was to say, well, why do we do this, Dad? Because we've always done it this way. Don't do that. Bad answer. Meaning. We have to communicate to the next generation meaning and value and why we find this so satisfying. And what it's doing, what the purpose is also to delight ourselves in the Lord, but what it's preparing us for. What do you think are the consequences of this kind of one desire that are lived out in the life of God's people? Well, remember what the psalm is doing here. Remember what David is doing here. He's strengthening himself because he knows something is coming. Why is what I've taken the time to describe so important this morning? Why is delighting yourself in the Lord and His house and His worship and taking advantage of that and cherishing every opportunity that you have for that, why is that so important today? Why, boys and girls, do we come here and we sing and we present an offering to the Lord and we listen to His Word and we praise Him from the depths of our hearts? Why are we doing this? What is the benefit to the soul? Well, the psalm gives us one. Let me ask you this. What's your greatest fear? Everyone who has fears? What's your greatest fear? What fear do you have in life? Is life just good, only good from here? Is it? Maybe. I have no idea what your fear may be, but let me tell you about the psalmist for a minute. Whatever his great fear was, it happened. And I want you to look at verse 7 this morning. All this confidence in the psalm is really remarkable. He had trusted, he had been preserved, he had been strengthened all throughout the course of his life, and he had been beholding the pleasantness of Jesus Christ by faith. And then what happens in verse 7? Well, everyone's confused about verse 7 because it's like this is a whole different psalm. It's like a different person has entered in, isn't it? You'll notice the shift here. Is this really the same guy who at the end of verse 6 is shouting out with joy to the Lord and now he comes with the most intense affliction and cry that we read of? Hear, O Lord, when I cry with my voice. Have mercy on me and answer me. So that is quite a shift. Some have said this must be a mistake. That they put together two psalms that were different psalms. And I say, you've missed the whole point of the psalm. What happened to Him? Hear, O Lord, when I cry aloud. Be gracious to me and answer me. You have said, now listen to this, seek my face. Seek my face. My heart says to you, your face, Lord, do I seek. 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 I don't know what it was but to me as I read that it seems like death has come upon him I'm not told exactly what it is neither are you but all of a sudden we have shifted into the most deep searching and heart bleeding cry that we come across that I was talking about last week in Psalm 18 notice the cry here. Deep from in the depths. And he says, you know, in the past you told me to seek and I saw it. And now I'm seeking you like never before and I'm asking you to deliver me. I need you. Don't turn your face away. I've come to the point where it's easy right now to question the goodness of the Lord. He has turned, notice he keeps emphasizing here, don't turn the anger and the wrath. Turn your face in anger from Me. You see? This is, I suppose, why the Ecclesiastes tell the young people, enjoy it now, because hard days come. They come. And so in the face of the valley of the shadow of death, here he is staring at it, And he's crying out, teach me, O Lord. Lead me in this path because of my enemies. They're all around me. They are encamped around me. And you hear his request, I'm so shaken up. Show me the way I should conduct myself through it. Show me what is well-pleasing to you. And what the Lord did for him, I believe the psalm shows, is that in a moment, surrounded his mind with everything he had ever been assured of throughout the course of his life, which is the crucial point of the psalm. The psalmist is saying, and I love the older translation, I would have lost heart unless I had believed. I would have lost heart. Believed what? The promises of the Gospel. That I would see the goodness of the Lord. Verse 13, I believe. This is what he's talking about. Faith. I believe that I shall look upon, I'm going to gaze upon the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. It's a beautiful, beautiful confidence that all of a sudden comes out. And I say this this morning, this is not something that comes out of the blue. Most of us here have been blessed to be raised in the faith, to be trained in it, to have a sign put on our children that from the beginning as we saw this morning that they always belong to the Lord. And our job as parents is to teach them that. You are the Lord. And we have what is so common to us. We have church. We have Bible. We have Sunday school. We have schools where we can train up a worldview. It's what we've provided. We have all of these things. All of these blessings. You ever thought what it's preparing you for? I don't know what awaits you. I don't know what awaits me. I don't know even the trials that await the life of the church. There will be. But here we are. And what will you have at that hour? you're going to be searching for an answer. And the beautiful thing that the Lord's going to do for you is He's going to surround your mind with the answer you've been taught all of your life in seeking the beauties of the Lord's services. And it won't be taken from you at that hour. Remember Jesus said that? It won't be taken. He's going to remove the clouds and give you clarity of thought. And that you would know His forgiveness that you would know His love, that you would know that there is a rest that awaits those who trust the Lord Jesus Christ. And so the psalm ends with that kind of consolation, doesn't it? It ends with an assurance that I will take good courage. I will, what does it say? Wait on the Lord and I will be strong. Let your heart take courage. Wait on the Lord. He may not have been given an answer for the circumstance, but certainly his faith birthed confidence to wait. And notice how it ends on a very high note of faith. I trust Him. Whatever it is, I trust Him. And that's the beauty of this today. Seek Him while He may be found. Tomorrow comes, and the light that is given to you this day will guide you the whole way through. God will give light to your darkness in the face of Jesus Christ who shines in your hearts. So the question for us today is, do we believe that? And do we show it in that one desire that the psalm here describes? Seek that. You will find. You will be filled. You will be satisfied. Amen. O Lord our God, we are so grateful to be in Your house today. We just can't get this anywhere else. and we want a recovery of a valuing of coming to gather as Your people and worshiping You and delighting in the beauties of Your house. So today, Lord, we pray that You would set this conviction deep within our hearts and our lives that we would today delight to know You. Delight to hear Your Word. to grow strong in grace and in truth in a day when though there are many afflictions around us, You give strength and grace for the way so that when tomorrow comes, what we have will not be taken from us. Thank You for being our shelter and thank You for being our light. Encourage Your people greatly today of Your great love and that You never leave us nor forsake us. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.