Psalm 27:1-14 | Confidence to Certainty

Good morning.

It's a privilege to be here to be bringing God's Word to you this morning. We're going to be in Psalm 27, the entire Psalm, looking at a Psalm of David. I believe it's on page 484 of your pew Bibles. Let's read the entire psalm together.

The Lord is my light and my salvation— whom should I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life— whom should I dread? When evildoers came against me to devour my flesh, my foes and my enemies stumbled and fell. Though an army deploys against me, my heart will not be afraid; though a war breaks out against me, I will still be confident. I have asked one thing from the Lord; it is what I desire: to dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, gazing on the beauty of the Lord and seeking him in his temple. For he will conceal me in his shelter in the day of adversity; he will hide me under the cover of his tent; he will set me high on a rock. Then my head will be high above my enemies around me; I will offer sacrifices in his tent with shouts of joy. I will sing and make music to the Lord. Lord, hear my voice when I call; be gracious to me and answer me. My heart says this about you: “Seek his face.” Lord, I will seek your face. Do not hide your face from me; do not turn your servant away in anger. You have been my helper; do not leave me or abandon me, God of my salvation. Even if my father and mother abandon me, the Lord cares for me. Because of my adversaries, show me your way, Lord, and lead me on a level path. Do not give me over to the will of my foes, for false witnesses rise up against me, breathing violence. I am certain that I will see the Lord’s goodness in the land of the living. Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart be courageous. Wait for the Lord. — Psalm 27:1-14 (CSB)

Father, we consider the words of this psalm this morning. And whether we are in a current season of adversity or preparing to face one, we pray that the words of this psalm will show us your way, that it will lead us on a level path. God, would your words today build our confidence and our trust in you. Amen.

The Nature of Adversity

We all face adversity of different sorts throughout our lives. And it's clear from this reading of Psalm 27 that David faced a real and present danger, an enemy who threatened to take his life, to stamp out all sense of safety and any glimmer of hope. We can relate to his experience of adversity even though our circumstances may not be entirely the same as his.

From childhood, we might remember with pain that mean kid at the playground who threatened to push us off the jungle gym or smash the sand creation that we spent all afternoon crafting. As teenagers entering adulthood, we might remember the social pressure from our peers to look or to act a certain way, or the ridicule that we face from not fitting in, or the backlash for having an unpopular opinion.

And as adults, these things just get more sophisticated. We still live under the pressures and the expectations of society, the misunderstanding that we face as outsiders. We wrestle with the grief and loss of loved ones. We face health trials and the reality of death as we see our bodies hurting and not working the way that they used to.

Even more, as followers of Jesus, we can face a wall of indifference from our neighbors or their disapproval of the Bible's message. As Christians living overseas in a Muslim society, my family has experienced the isolation, the loneliness, and the scorn from our neighbors for trusting in God's Word and allowing it to order our lives.

So, I first preached a version of this sermon to the church that we prayed for this morning—Çankaya Baptist Church. It's an English-speaking church in the city that we serve. At that time, I felt a burden to encourage the church with the confidence that we have as citizens of heaven, even as we lived as foreigners in a Muslim country. There seemed to be a particular heaviness of living as followers of Christ in a Muslim society that weighed on the church. The devil's attacks, his accusations, seemed to be aimed at discouraging the church, to obstruct the spread of his Gospel.

My family and I arrived in California this past summer for a season of what we hoped would be rest and reconnecting with friends and family and our church, and to prepare for a return to the field in early January. Well, it's February and we're still here. Our plans were upended this past fall when we got news of a crisis involving our extended family. Discouraging family circumstances and trials with health have continued, and at times have felt lost and confused. 'Why is God letting us go through this?' We've been in a season of waiting and not entirely sure of what the next few months will bring.

In the face of discouragement and adversity, how do we respond? And how can we maintain a resolute confidence in God's goodness, His control, and His power? We can often be swayed by hard circumstances, right? When faced with adversity or trial, our trust and belief in God's character and His promises can waver. And in such circumstances, our realities can be shaped by what is apparent versus what is eternally true, by what we can see rather than what we can't see.

And so what is needed to lift our eyes from what is perceived in front of us to what transcends our perception? How can we stop listening to a false narrative inside of us and start trusting the timeless truths about who God is?

A Deeper Look at the Psalms of Trust

So today we consider Psalm 27 where David relates a very deeply personal experience in the face of his adversity. If you know anything about David's rise to kingship, you know that it was all but a smooth journey. Psalm 27 belongs to a group of psalms which some commentators have grouped together and called them the 'Psalms of Trust,' starting with the beloved Psalm 23 and ending with Psalm 30. So in this set of eight psalms of trust, we find a running theme of confident reliance on the sovereign Lord.

So let's listen to the well-worn words of Psalm 23:4.

Even when I go through the darkest valley, I fear no danger, for you are with me; your rod and your staff—they comfort me. — Psalm 23:4 (CSB)

Or hear the opening verse of Psalm 25.

Lord, I appeal to you. — Psalm 25:1 (CSB)

My God, I trust in you. Do not let me be disgraced. Do not let my enemies gloat over me.

And I love the words of verse three of Psalm 25 that tell us that our waiting and confidence on the Lord is not in vain.

No one who waits for you will be disgraced; those who act treacherously without cause will be disgraced. — Psalm 25:3 (CSB)

So alongside this theme of trust is this sense of longing to be with God, to dwell in his house. Let's hear again the familiar words of Psalm 23.

Only goodness and faithful love will pursue me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord as long as I live. — Psalm 23:6 (CSB)

Hear also Psalm 26:8.

Lord, I love the house where you dwell, the place where your glory resides. — Psalm 26:8 (CSB)

And Psalm 30 bears this superscript, a dedication song for the house, indicating that it was probably a psalm written to be sung at the future dedication of God's temple, His dwelling among His people. And so we'll see echoes of these themes again in Psalm 27.

So as we walk through this psalm together, I want to help us to seek the Lord's face in the face of adversity, as we see how David himself responded to threats against his own life and how he emerges with resolute certainty at the end in God's goodness, and how what begins as confidence in the Lord ends in a rock-solid certainty of the Lord's salvation.

So as we seek the Lord's face, we will experience three shifts, and these will form the three points of this sermon. So as we seek the Lord's face, we experience: number one, the title of this message, 'Confidence to Certainty'; two will be 'Desire to Deliverance'; and three, 'Beholding to Becoming.'

And so before we dive into the first point, I kind of want to lay out a roadmap that will help us track with these three points. So if we could consider this psalm broken up into five sections or stanzas, we'll do a first pass through the first three stanzas. And so these will correspond to points one, two, and three that I just shared. And then we'll continue with stanzas four and five. And these will correspond back to points two and one. I hope that makes sense. So the sermon will progress kind of like points 1-2-3-2-1. And so we'll see how the psalm climaxes in this central portion or the third stanza of the psalm where David is all but face to face with the Lord. We could imagine our journey, if you're a visual person, as one of ascending a mountain, and then we reach the summit with the third stanza, and then we descend down the other side.

From Confidence to Certainty (Psalm 27:1-3)

So we're going to start our ascent now by looking at the first point, 'Confidence to Certainty,' in verses 1 to 3. So looking back at the opening verse, we notice that David starts with two pairs of declarations and questions directed at himself. He declares that God is his light and his salvation and the stronghold of his life. And so these are objective declarative statements about God's character. Light is what drives away darkness. Salvation is to be delivered from what threatens in the dark. As the stronghold of David's life, there's nothing that can happen or will happen to him that's outside of God's control. And so it follows that David indeed has no one to fear or to dread.

So in this opening verse of the psalm, David's starting point is the reality that God is with him. And his conclusion is that God is good, and there's no threat that is a match for God. David didn't come to this realization in a vacuum. David is, as we all are, situated in our circumstances. And it's not that our circumstances change who God is essentially, but our experiences often serve to draw out or to teach us more deeply a truth about who He is.

Our brothers and sisters in Central Asia face a set of obstacles that may be foreign to many of us. To identify as a disciple of Jesus will often mean disapproval or being disowned by or even the threat of physical harm from family or severely limited opportunities in the workplace and generally being treated as an outcast from mainstream society. And so for these brothers and sisters, knowing God as Father and the local church as family takes on a deep meaning.

In our updates that we sent out from the field, we heard about one sister who's endured threats and severe mistreatment from her parents for visiting church. For sisters like her, God's fatherly care and His protection and the local church's being a family to her, they become a lived reality even as they lose their previous sources of belonging and security.

So looking at the next verses, 2 and 3, we're introduced to David's context, his lived experience. And it's against this backdrop of David's experience that we begin to understand why these truths about God in verse 1 are so powerfully relevant. He recalls a time when he was being hunted down by his enemies to destroy him, to 'devour his flesh,' it says, and how they were ultimately routed. Extending this now in verse 3 to an entire army coming after him and a full-blown war breaking out against him, David echoes the same confidence that he had at the beginning: 'My heart will not be afraid. I will still be confident.'

Now, if it were true that simply acknowledging God's salvation makes all of our problems go away, 'never worry or be afraid,' then we could just end right here and say we just need to fix the way that we think. And while our thinking about God and His protection over us is super important, faith is not just something that we can call up at will. The Christian life is an extended battle against unbelief. Like the father of the epileptic boy who desperately approached Jesus for his son's healing, we likewise find ourselves calling upon God: 'Help our unbelief.' (Mark 9:24)

Faith, as a gift from God, is built up through our response to circumstances that will challenge us to either lean into God or to retreat from Him in times of trouble. As we read earlier, the superscript above Psalm 27, it doesn't give any specific information about David's historical setting when he wrote this psalm. But we do know from Old Testament history and the Psalms that David had plenty of harrowing experiences that he lived through. And so this isn't some imagined trial, like when David was being hunted down by Saul's men in the wilderness and he only narrowly escapes, or later in his life when he's again fleeing for his life, this time from his own son Absalom.

So, what is it that produces such confidence in David, that he's able to say that even if a war breaks out against him, that he'll still be confident? We find clues in David's Psalms and in Old Testament history that David's confidence in the Lord grew not in spite of his circumstances, but through them. And each new trial was an exercise in either binding himself closer to the Lord of his salvation or withdrawing from Him.

Now, what if we put ourselves in David's place and filled in the blank concerning a particular trial either in the past or one that we're currently facing? Maybe some here have even had the experience of literally running for your life from an enemy out to destroy you. Even if not, as believers, we all have a real enemy—the devil who prowls around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour. (1 Peter 5:8) So, in what way is the devil likely to attack? What's the one thing in your life that if attacked would send you spiraling? Is it financial ruin, a relational conflict, devastating news about a family member, another bad health report? When the devil attacks, or when circumstances tempt us to despair, where will we find our confidence?

Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones is remembered for his well-known counsel: 'Talk to yourself. Stop listening so much to yourself and instead speak truth to yourself.' Here's what he wrote: 'You must say to your soul, "Why art thou cast down?" And instead of muttering in such a depressed, unhappy way, you must go on to remind yourself of God—who he is, and what God is, and what God has done, and what God has pledged himself to do. Then, having done that, end on this great note: defy yourself and defy other people and defy the devil and the whole world and say with this man, "I shall yet praise him for the help of his countenance."'

It's confidence in the Lord that spawns courage to overcome fear and dread. So when we return to this first point with the final stanza of this psalm, we'll see how David's confidence then blossoms into an unshakable certainty that God will finally deliver. But first, we'll turn to see how David's singular passion for God contributes to this confidence.

A Singular Desire for God (Psalm 27:4-6)

Our second point is 'Desire to Deliverance.' And we'll consider that in the second stanza, verses 4 to 6. Our desires reveal a lot about who we are. If you had a magic lamp and you were granted not one, but say 300 wishes, what would you ask for? You probably wouldn't hesitate to start rattling off some small things from your wish list, like a vacation or a new car or fish tacos. But what if instead of 300 or 3,000, you got one single wish? Now, we probably wouldn't be so quick to start shooting off food orders. It would take some time to think about what that one request might be. And it would definitely reveal something of our priorities, our values, our treasure.

So what is David's one wish? Let's look again at verse 4.

I have asked one thing from the Lord; it is what I desire: to dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, gazing on the beauty of the Lord and seeking him in his temple. — Psalm 27:4 (CSB)

What we saw in the psalm's first few verses was David's confidence not in himself, but in the Lord. Self-confidence would produce an arrogant independence rooted in his own abilities, but a confidence in God produces an extreme desperation for Him. Not a hopeless type of desperation, but an expectant pleading in confidence. Remember David's circumstances. We might have expected a plea for protection, for deliverance from his enemies. If I were in his shoes, I can easily imagine myself pleading with the Lord in this way. I'd find it hard to wish for anything but immediate physical rescue.

So when it comes to verse 4 and we see that the one thing that David asks for is to dwell in the house of the Lord, it causes us to think. To dwell in the house of the Lord, to gaze on the beauty of the Lord, is his one wish. For David, it seems like situational deliverance is almost like a foregone conclusion. Reading on in verse 5, we find language concerning what God will surely do for David: 'He will conceal me. He will hide me. He will set me high on a rock.' To be always in God's presence simply to behold His perfection and His beauty seemed to be the only needful thing for David.

We see a beautiful picture of this type of devotion in the Gospels when Jesus visits two sisters in their home. Both sisters genuinely love Jesus. But while Martha is busy making preparations around the house, Mary is seen sitting at Jesus's feet. And when Martha complains to Jesus that her sister isn't pulling her load of the chores, Jesus responds by saying, 'But one thing is necessary. Mary has made the right choice, and it will not be taken away from her.' To be with God, to be in His presence, as with Mary and so with David, is the only needful thing, and it will not be denied the one who seeks it.

The result in verse 6, once God has drawn David to Himself, is that he will triumph over his enemies. The response of one who has experienced God's favor is worship and praise. He says, 'I will offer sacrifices in his tent with shouts of joy. I will sing and make music to the Lord.' And while this type of response of worship can happen as an individual response, the psalm also picks up a corporate dimension of worship as well.

So let's first consider the response of praise in our personal lives. How often do we spend time individually reflecting on our deliverance from sin through Jesus? To simply be in His presence. I find this discipline lacking in my own life and find it too easy to simply slip into a pattern of reciting a prayer wish list instead of being still in His presence. If one thing is clear from the pattern of this psalm, the central theme revolves around praise for who God is over and above what I need.

And secondly, we also notice David's reference to 'the house of the Lord,' 'his temple,' and 'his tent.' And these all signify places where Yahweh would dwell among his people. And in this way, the act of seeking and beholding Yahweh builds confidence not only as an individual, but in the company of others who experience that shared desire to seek His face. And this would make sense for David as the leader of his people, to be the one who ushers the people into an assembly where many are gathered to praise God together. So what's the ultimate desire of a person who has experienced the Lord's covenant faithfulness? In verse 4, we saw that David expresses that one thing is to dwell in His house. And as he seeks the Lord's face, he becomes even more convinced of God's care and His protection over him. And so this now takes us into the heart of this psalm.

Beholding God's Face (Psalm 27:7-10)

And our third point, 'Beholding to Becoming.' That is, David's beholding God's presence leads to becoming fully His, the Lord's own. So we can call this middle section, verses 7-10, the climax of the psalm, where David is now all but face to face with God Himself. This is the pinnacle of nearness that David experiences as he pursues God's face.

The first thing we notice when we start reading verse 7 is that the voice changes from David as the narrator to now David in direct dialogue with God. It says, 'Lord, hear my voice when I call.' And this does two things. First, David is no longer talking about God, but to Him. And second, we as the readers are effectively transported away from all memory of the enemy's presence, and we're ushered into God's very presence. It's almost like we're given privileged access to an intimate conversation taking place between David and his Lord. It's one thing to hear someone recounting a conversation they had with another person. It's quite another to witness the actual conversation unfolding right before you. And so that's what we have in these verses.

Verse 8 takes us deeper still with David's heartfelt words to seek the Lord's face. At this point, David gives voice to his desire to be in the Lord's presence. And he determines in his heart to seek His face. Like we saw with Mary at Jesus's feet, to seek the Lord's face and to long for His nearness seems to be the only necessary thing for David. Admission into the Lord's presence would mean safety and salvation from all his enemies.

Now, for all these verses do to give an impression of undistracted communion with God, it's also worth pointing out that immediately following, we see for the first time in this psalm any shadow that God would fail to be David's help. Verse 9 lays out these requests: 'Do not hide your face from me. Do not turn your servant away. Do not leave me or abandon me.' And at first, it would seem that these pleas don't sound like the words of one whose full confidence is in God. But in fact, the relationship between God's objective truth and our lived experience is complex. We said earlier that it's not as simple as learning a truth and that being the end of it. There is a constant preaching to ourselves both in stating truths about who God is, but also at the same time ruling out things that are impossible about God.

So to be sure, a faithful God could never hide His face or turn His servant away or abandon David. God could not abandon His own faithfulness. And so we can treat these statements as exposing the impossibility of God not keeping His promises. In the final account, after expressing these scenarios that are outside the realm of God's steadfast faithfulness, David finally concludes that he has nowhere to run except to God. Even if his own father and mother, his closest kin, were to abandon him, he is indeed secure in the Lord's care for him. He becomes fully the Lord's own in every sense.

David's confession here is echoed in Peter's words to Jesus: 'Lord, to whom will we go? You have the words of eternal life.' (John 6:68) Let's imagine for a moment if David continued to entertain doubts about God, about the possibility of God turning or abandoning him. As his focus would shift from God's face to the threatening presence of his enemies, maybe these untrue thoughts could begin to dominate his imagination. It is certainly what his enemies would have wanted him to believe and would have ultimately led him down the road of unbelief.

And so like David, we're likewise constantly interacting with our heart's desires, fighting back lies from without and within. And we know that the heart can be deceitful, and we should be careful about blindly following our heart's desires. But David's desire here is to seek the Lord's face. And that was a pure and righteous desire. And the question is, can we recognize the good and godward desires of our heart and respond in trusting faith?

So in this climax section of the psalm, David we saw is in direct dialogue with his Lord. Now let's begin our descent down the mountain and we'll be looking at the fourth stanza of how David's desire leads to deliverance. So this takes us back to our second point and it'll in a way complete the meaning of what it means to be delivered.

Deliverance Through Desire (Psalm 27:11-12)

Now we're in verses 11 to 12. The fourth stanza, while David continued to speak now directly to God, he is again recalling the menacing reality of his adversaries. And in this way, this fourth stanza reflects the real realities that we saw in the second stanza where there is an undercurrent of tension between present affliction and longing to be in God's presence. It's like he sees the threat of his enemies, but he's pleading with his Lord, 'Show me, lead me, and don't give me over to those who speak falsehood and uphold violence.' This is a cry for deliverance from his enemies and into the presence of God, arising out of this tension between his present reality and who God is. And so we see how David's desire to be with God leads to deliverance from his enemies.

The Certainty of God's Goodness (Psalm 27:13-14)

And now we'll move into the last and final stanza, verses 13 and 14. And we'll come back to our first point, 'Confidence to Certainty.' And let's read these last two verses again, starting in verse 13.

I am certain that I will see the Lord’s goodness in the land of the living. Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart be courageous. Wait for the Lord. — Psalm 27:13-14 (CSB)

With this final section, we arrive at the conclusion of David's psalm. The confidence that he expressed at the beginning of the psalm wasn't just wishful thinking. It ends in a certainty of God's unfailing faithfulness. Verse 13 sees a return to David's way of talking to himself in the same way that we saw before. He says to himself, 'I am certain that I will see the Lord's goodness.' Just as he addressed the Lord as the stronghold of his life at the beginning of the psalm, so we see that he is bound for the land of the living.

At the end of the matter, David's final self-directed instruction in verse 14 is to 'Wait for the Lord.' The one whose confidence is in the Lord, the heart that is made courageous, will wait for the Lord. And waiting implies that something has not yet come into full view. In David's circumstances, this may have meant that final deliverance from his worldly adversaries was yet to be fully accomplished. But there's something more here than just temporal deliverance.

The idea of waiting on the Lord is an important theme that runs through the storyline of the Bible. God created the world good without peril or adversity. A world where there was no sin separating us from God. But Adam and Eve in their unbelief rebelled against God, bringing sin and death into the world. And after the fall, God promised that one day a Savior would come to crush sin and rescue people from the penalty of sin. And so throughout the centuries that spanned the Old Testament, there was a period of expectant waiting. The Lord's prophets reiterated the promise of the Savior to come. And finally, at the appointed time, Jesus, God incarnate, came into the world. He lived a sinless life, was crucified for our sins, and was raised again from the dead. The victory over sin has been won, and Scripture promises that all who trust in the name of Jesus will be saved.

If you're here today and you find yourself not knowing whether you are forgiven or not, or unsure of where your hope lies, if you're despairing under hard circumstances in your life, then the promise of forgiveness from sin and the hope of eternal life in Jesus is for you. This is a certain hope for all who trust in Jesus through faith.

For us today, living 3,000 years after David, we likewise find ourselves waiting for the Lord in a sense that is different, but not entirely different from David's. While David lived in an era that looked forward to the coming of a Messiah, we live in a time that looks back on Jesus's finished work on the cross. And at the same time, we await the final return and victory of Jesus on the clouds of heaven. The Lord's salvation may not be fully apparent to us now, especially as we continue to face adversity in the present life, but we can wait with the certainty that His rule and His reign will be fully consummated when He returns. And He certainly will.

And like David's one desire to dwell with the Lord, every Christian's desire to be with the Lord will finally be fulfilled, never to be taken away. With the start of this new year, I picked up a little book called *Waiting Isn't a Waste* because I thought I could use some wisdom on that topic. Because we tend to think of waiting generally negatively—things like standing in line or rush hour traffic or being at the DMV. But author Mark Rogrip encourages us to recognize that waiting is what Christians are supposed to do. When we think about waiting this way, we learn that waiting isn't just about killing time in the gap moments of life. Waiting can be redemptive when it pushes us to lean into God amid adversity and uncertainty and to grow in our longing for the day when we see Him face to face, to find our confidence in Him when we can't be confident in anything else.

That's a lesson that the Lord in His wisdom is teaching me as I face the uncertainty of our next several months. Will everything work out with our extended family situation? Will He give answers to health concerns? Will He give us peace about our decision when it comes time? He's telling me not to find my confidence in having answers to all these questions, but in His faithfulness to answer them in His way, in His time—that I will certainly see His goodness as I wait for Him.

And so when faced with adversity, where will we go? Into God's presence or away from Him? The one who has tasted and seen that the Lord is good, like David, will seek the Lord's face. And as we saw in the climax of this psalm, beholding His face leads to a transformation of heart, a whole new assessment of our circumstances. A pure desire to dwell with the Lord leads to deliverance by His hand. Confidence in God's faithfulness leads to certainty that He will deliver on all of His promises to save. There's but one place that we can go to lay hold of this unshakable certainty, and that's in the Lord's abiding presence. So when we're surrounded by a million hardships, seek His face. And when those adversities don't go away, wait on Him. Our confidence is in the certainty of God's faithfulness.

Let's pray. Lord, because of Your faithfulness, we can be fully confident in the face of many adversities. How often we forfeit that confidence by seeking quick answers to our problems rather than seeking Your face. Forgive us, Lord, for our misdirected hopes and our failure to put our faith in the one who delivers. We want to say with David that our one desire is to dwell with You all our days, to gaze on Your beauty. God, give us such hearts to seek Your face alone all of our days and in the day of adversity. In Jesus' name. Amen.