Series

We were horrified this week at the news of yet another school shooting in Colorado. A man who appears to have been mentally unstable took a rifle to his old middle school, and shot two students before a teacher wrestled him to the ground. That troubles us, up here in Loveland, but think of what it does to the students, and staff at the school, and all the parents there. Think especially what it does to the two students who were shot, and their families. How do you cope with something like that?

Few of us experience such violence in our lives, but we do face other troubles that are potentially damaging to our souls. Any number of our families have experienced divorce, which is worse than the death of a spouse. We have about a dozen people in our church who are looking for work, and being laid off can be a devastating thing for a person’s self-esteem—especially for a man. We have folks facing life-threatening illnesses. How do we cope with these sorts of things?

Psalm 27 is a good place to start. I think of it as a sandwich, with slices of confidence at the top and bottom, but in the middle there is lots of trouble.

I. Confidence in God v.1; Exodus 14:19,20; John 1:4,5,9; 1 John 1:5-7; Rom 8:37-39

He begins by expressing his confidence in the Lord, by rehearsing who God is to him.

This is always the right place to start. Start with God, not the problem. When we are in some difficulty, we need to take the time to remind ourselves who God is. Then hold the problem we face up to Him and see which is bigger.

In this first picture of Barbie, she looks like a person of normal size. If you were little, looking up at her, she would look big, like our problems often do to us. But in this second picture of her, against the backdrop of Notre Dame Cathedral, she doesn’t look so big, because the cathedral is so much bigger. That’s why it is so important to praise God when we are in trouble. The troubles can seem enormous until we start to recite who God is—in this case, our light, our salvation, our stronghold. So for example, if you are facing a time of great uncertainty, not sure at all what to do in your current situation, that can feel overwhelming; but if you meditate on the fact that God is the light of your life, and think about the fact that His Word is a lamp to your feet and a light to your path, and how Jesus said if we walk in the light we won’t stumble, pretty soon you can begin to relax and trust God to guide you in the midst of your uncertainty. Or if there is someone who is opposed to you, who is acting like an enemy, that can be really unsettling. But take some time each day to meditate on God as the stronghold of your life, the one in whom you can hide and be safe, an impregnable fortress. The bigger God gets in your mind, the smaller your enemies become.

Click here for a list of several hundred attributes of God, with Scripture verses printed out for each one. If you’re having trouble thinking of who God is, I encourage you to check that out and use it in your praise time.

“The Lord is the stronghold of my life.” You don’t need a stronghold unless you are under attack. In this psalm, like the one we looked at last week (Ps 25), David is dealing with enemies:

Who or what is attacking you today? It could be a person, like we talked about last week. Or it could be that you are facing an army of bill collectors; or there is a war raging in your body with bacteria or some other disease; or you are besieged with depression or fear. Evil can take all sorts of different forms, and this psalm can fit any of those circumstances. As many of you know, Bill and BJ Culver have been through many difficult years because of BJ’s health. This psalm has become a life-preserver for them. They have memorized the psalm, and frequently found encouragement and hope in different phrases in it. If you are dealing with some very challenging circumstances in your life, they would be happy to talk with you about how they have found the strength to go on in faith, partly through the powerful message of this psalm.

But notice his confidence in the face of those attacks—he will not fear; he will be confident, even if a whole army comes against him. How can he do that? Because the Lord is the stronghold of his life. I think we have to ask, what exactly does that mean, and what can we count on? Based on the experience of the martyrs in every century since the time of Christ, I think we can say that to have God as our “salvation” and our “stronghold” does not mean that we will never suffer or die. It does not mean that our enemies, whatever or whoever they are, will never win. So what does it mean that God is our stronghold and our salvation? I think it means that our soul is safe. It means that when we hide ourselves in Him, our true self, the core of our being that survives physical death, will be eternally secure. That’s what is meant by the famous passage in Romans 8:37-39, “No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither 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.” We may die; we may face demons; the future may be scary or even terrible. But nothing can separate us from God’s love in Jesus Christ. He is our salvation and our stronghold; in Him, we are ultimately safe.

If you could ask God for just one thing, knowing that it would be granted no matter what it was, what would you ask for? You get just one request, and that is guaranteed. What will it be? Take a moment to ponder that.

When David says he wants to live in the house of the Lord, he is not hoping to become a priest or Levite; he’s just saying he wants to live in the constant awareness of God’s presence. This is the prayer of a lover. When you are crazy in love, you want to be with that person all the time; that’s why people get married and move in together. You can be content just looking at your beloved for hours, or picturing them in your mind and day-dreaming about all their wonderful qualities. That’s how David feels about God.

How about you? Is that how you feel about Him? Or is your Quiet Time just another thing on your To Do list, or worse yet, a duty you don’t like but do it just because you are supposed to?

David says, I want to live in the conscious awareness of God’s presence all the time, and seek Him. The word “seek” is an active word. You can’t seek God sitting on your hands, or sleeping in, or being mentally lazy. You have to get up and go look for Him. You have to look in the Bible, where He has revealed Himself most fully. You have to be on the lookout for Him all through your day, because you never know when He’ll show up in some unexpected way. You have to be mentally alert to talk to God. And when we love Him as much as David did, we will do all that. We will seek Him with all our heart. Because the promise is, Jeremiah 29:13, “You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.”

I think we all realize that when times are good, it is easier to let our walk with Christ slide; we get lazy, and sloppy in our spiritual disciplines. But when times get tough, then we run to God and want to be close to Him. That’s what’s going on here in this psalm. Look at all the references to trouble in this psalm: evil men, enemies, armies coming against him, day of trouble, oppressors, foes, false witnesses. No wonder he wants to hide in the stronghold of his life!

But you don’t have to be in trouble to want more of God. You just have to be hungry, thirsty, for more of His grace, His love, His comfort, His strength, His beauty in your life.

· Psalm 42:1-2, “As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God. 2 My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God?”

· Psalm 63:1, “O God, you are my God, earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you, my body longs for you, in a dry and weary land where there is no water.”

I want to encourage you, even if you are not in a time of trouble right now, praise God for that, and set your sights on drawing closer to Him. Pray this prayer every day until it becomes the cry of your heart. “One thing I ask of the Lord, this is what I seek: 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 seek him in his temple.”

Then in verse 8, there’s another wonderful thought that grows out of the notion of seeking God and gazing on His beauty.

David has already said that his number one desire is to seek God, to enjoy Him, to gaze on His beauty. Verse 8 in the NIV says, “My heart says of you, ‘Seek his face!’” The text note in the NIV gives an alternate, and I think better, translation: “To you, O my heart, He has said, ‘Seek My face.’ Your face, Lord, I will seek.” (Ps 27:8). Most other modern translations do it this way, so that it is God saying, “Seek My face”. This is not only a better translation[1] but it is theologically better, because God is always the initiator in His relationships with us. He was the one who unilaterally intercepted Abraham and called him into a covenant relationship. He was the one who initiated the covenant with the people of Israel at Mt. Sinai. Jesus pointed out that His disciples did not choose Him; He chose them. Whenever we seek God’s face, it is because He has called us to do so. On our own, we just don’t seek out God. So I like this other translation better.

Chuck Swindoll tells a story that nicely illustrates the concept of the “face of God”. “During his days as president, Thomas Jefferson and a group of companions were traveling across the country on horseback. They came to a river which had left its banks because of a recent downpour. The swollen river had washed the bridge away. Each rider was forced to ford the river on horseback, fighting for his life against the rapid currents. The very real possibility of death threatened each rider, which caused a traveler who was not part of their group to step aside and watch. After several had plunged in and made it to the other side, the stranger asked President Jefferson if he would ferry him across the river. The president agreed without hesitation. The man climbed on, and shortly thereafter the two of them made it safely to the other side. As the stranger slid off the back of the saddle onto dry ground, one in the group asked him, ‘Tell me, why did you select the president to ask this favor of?’ The man was shocked, admitting he had no idea it was the president who had helped him. >All I know,= he said, > is that on some of your faces was written the answer >No,= and on some of them was the answer, >Yes.= His was a >Yes= face.”[2]

What kind of a face does God have in your eyes? When you think about Him looking at you, what kind of expression does He have on His face? Does it say Ayes@ to your needs and requests, and Ayes@ to you as an individual? Or does God have a Ano@ face to you?

A. ASeek My Face@ 1 Chronicles 16:11; 2 Chronicles 7:14; Numbers 6:25‑26; Psalm 67:1; 1 Corinthians 13:12; Revelation 22:3‑4

$ 1 Chronicles 16:11, “Look to the Lord and his strength; seek his face always.”

$ 2 Chronicles 7:14, “if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.”

$ Revelation 22:3‑4, “No longer will there be any curse. The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and his servants will serve him. They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads.”

Does that prospect appeal to you, or terrify you? Do you want to see Him face to face, or not? It all depends on what God=s face says to you.

All too often, our view of God is not in accordance with reality. We overemphasize some aspect of His character, or minimize another trait, and we wind up with a cartoon caricature of God, like these pictures of Albert Einstein and President Obama.

Brennan Manning says, we may see God as the one who catches people by surprise in a moment of weakness, the God incapable of smiling at our awkward mistakes, the God who does not accept a seat at our human festivities, the God who says, Ayou’ll pay for that,@ the God incapable of understanding that children will always get dirty and be forgetful, the God always snooping around after sinners.[3] Those ideas distort God as much as the pictures of these famous people.

J.B. Phillips has a book called Your God Is Too Small, in which he describes some of the caricatures of God that we carry around in our minds.

C For some, He is a resident policemanCa nagging inner voice that at worst spoils our pleasure and at best keeps us rather negatively on the path of virtue.

C For others, He is a parental hangover. Our concept of God is powerfully shaped by our human fathers, especially. Sometimes that is a pretty fair approximation of the true God, and other times it is light years away from Him.

C Others see Him as a very old man, sort of like a grandfather, who is not only old and kindly, but old fashioned. Lots of people think God’s rules are way out of date.

C Legalists often think of God as the absolutely just Judge whose judgments are never tempered with mercy. He is a God of absolute perfection, who demands no less from His subjects.

C Others look at the vastness of the universe and conclude that God must be something like a cosmic CEO. My own mother believed that God was too busy running the universe to have time for someone as insignificant as she was.

C Many in our culture take their cues for God from what they see in the movies; now there=s a scary thought! You might do a study sometime of the ways God is portrayed by Hollywood. For example, Morgan Freeman plays God in two films of the past decade, Bruce Almighty, and Evan Almighty. There isn’t anything really offensive about Freeman’s character, but neither is he the biblical God.

When you think about God, what kind of face does He have? Is He one of these caricatures, or something else? Or do you take your view of God strictly from the Bible?

The next section in the psalm speaks to the possibility that God might turn His face away from us.

Psalm 27:9, “Do not hide your face from me, do not turn your servant away in anger; you have been my helper. Do not reject me or forsake me, O God my Savior.”

A universal human behavior when we don’t want anything to do with someone is to turn our face away from them; we refuse to look at them. That’s why mothers all over the world can be heard yelling at their children, “Look at me when I’m talking to you!” We speak of giving someone the cold shoulder, which implies we aren’t looking at them, we’re turning our backs on them. How would you feel if God did that to you? Sometimes it is terrifying to have God looking at us so intently, but wouldn’t it be worse to have Him just hide His face from us altogether, to reject us?

David thought so, which is why he prayed, “you have been my helper. Do not reject me or forsake me, O God my Savior.” But then he realized who he was talking to. Ps 27:10, “Though my father and mother forsake me, the Lord will receive me.” Wait—God doesn’t change. He’s not fickle. He won’t reject me. Even if the people closest to me on earth reject me, God won’t. I find that a very comforting thought. I remember the day, sitting in my office in another church, when I came across this verse for the first time, and it brought me to tears. Every human parent fails their children in some ways, and mine were no exception. There were some ways in which it felt like my father and mother had forsaken me emotionally, but this was such good news: God never would.

There are any number of ways parents can reject their children. They may be consumed with their own hurts or their job, and be emotionally absent from the kids. They may have such impossibly high standards that the kids can never measure up, so they never feel accepted. When parents divorce, the kids almost always read that as rejection of them. It isn’t, but that’s how they read it. Worse yet, some parents abuse their children in terrible ways. Parents who give up their children for adoption can create feelings of rejection and insecurity in their children when they get older. Children who have experienced any of these things are especially vulnerable to feeling like they are worthless, that nobody wants them. And those feelings can plague us well into our adult years. It is so important to know that God our Father will never reject us. Here is a heavenly Parent who accepts us completely. Jesus said He would be with us until the end of the age. The Scripture says three times that God will never leave us or forsake us.[4]

Ps 27:13, “I am still confident of this: I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.” David believes that he will see evidence of God’s goodness here in this life. He won’t have to wait for heaven to see that. I preached a few weeks ago on the thought that God is good—all the time, and He is. Even when you can’t see it, when there isn’t any evidence of God’s goodness toward you, believe it anyway. God hasn’t changed.

But it may take a while for that goodness to show through the mess you are in now. So…Ps 27:14, “Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart.” The NLT says, “be brave and courageous”. These same two words show up often in Scripture. They are the words God used to encourage Joshua as he was taking over leadership of Israel from Moses. Be strong and courageous.

What if you don’t feel strong, brave and courageous? What if you are feeling scared or anxious because of the enemies or the difficult situation you are in? What if you already feel defeated? I think we can assume that if God tells us to do something, then it is possible for us to do it. So what can you do to feel strong in your situation?

· Read Scripture and remind yourself of who God is. He is way bigger than your problem, no matter what it is. Read the psalms—read them out loud—they are full of laments and complaints, but they almost always end on a confident note.

But after you have done all that, remember: if you are still anxious or fearful, courage is doing the right thing even when you are afraid. If you don’t feel afraid, then it didn’t take courage. And wait for the Lord.

Ps 27:14, “Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart, and wait for the Lord.” Unless you are on your death bed, the game isn’t over yet. Life may be horrible for you right now; you may be suffering terribly; you may be under attack from all sorts of enemies; you may be in the day of trouble. But wait for the Lord. It’s a conscious, deliberate decision. It’s an active thing, not passive. BJ Culver said that the word suggests a waiter at a fancy restaurant: vigilant, attentive, quick to serve those at the table. That’s what our attitude should be toward God as we wait to see His goodness demonstrated to us.

Those who wait on the Lord will renew their strength. Sometimes you will be able to soar on wings of eagles, borne up by the wind of the Holy Spirit; other times you will be empowered to run the marathon of life without getting tired; and at other times, maybe all you can do is walk without fainting. But wait for the Lord. I’m sure you have discovered by now that our timing is different from God’s. So we often have to wait longer than we think we should, and it’s hard. It can be very hard. But keep waiting, keep hoping, keep expecting to see the goodness of the Lord. This is not just the secular advice that when you come to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on. This is much better, because we are not just hanging on by the strength of our own will and determination; we are waiting for God. We are waiting in the confidence that we will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Be strong, and take heart, and wait for the Lord.

[1] The command (seek) is addressed to more than one person. ESV, NASB, NLT, RSV and the marginal reading of the NIV all translate it in a way that reflects this, as they have God speaking to the psalmist’s heart as a representative of all believers.

[2]Charles R.Swindoll, The Grace Awakening (Dallas: Word Publishing, 1990), p.5f.

[3]Brennan Manning, The Ragamuffin Gospel (Portland, OR: Multnomah Press, 1990), p.36.

[4] He never does reject us, but sometimes it feels like it. Sometimes, God withdraws the sense of His presence, and we are left feeling abandoned. This experience is so terrible it has been called the “dark night of the soul”, and no one who has been there wants to go through it again. But the thing we must remember when God seems distant, when it feels like He has hidden His face from us, is that He is still there, even though we can’t sense Him. Even if the people closest to you—your father and mother, or your spouse—reject you, God will not