Shall we pray.
God, our light and our salvation, illuminate our lives.
Illuminate your word now and every day,
that we may see your goodness in the land of living
and looking on your beauty
may be changed into the likeness of Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.
These Sundays in Epiphany – this is the season we’re in from Christmas until the first Sunday in February – we’re trying to explore different aspects of discipleship.
So last Sunday we focused on, on John 1, and we heard those words about staying with Jesus and pointing others to Jesus. But you could say last Sunday also was about invitation.
How Jesus invites us to be with him and how we can invite others to discover Jesus today.
If you have to do a title for today, it’s, you could say, what’s an attitude of a disciple?
An attitude of a disciple.
Jesus calls people to be as disciples. We see that in Matthew 4,v12-25, but what can be our attitude?
We’re going to focus on Psalm 27, and just see what we learned about David and his attitude that can help us in our attitude as a disciple.
At my High School in Northern Ireland, when we began our first year, each of us received a red pocket size Bible. It was a New Testament, from the Gideons Society. And that was a New Testament, which also included the Psalms in the back, and part of my spiritual journey includes how as my exams approached in my final year.
You know, I mean, I wasn’t a Christian, but I was worried and I was anxious would I fail. But I discovered that by reading a psalm, a Psalm or two before I did my revision, or before I did my exams, I experienced God’s peace.
Why are Psalms important? Well, just an overview before we come into Psalm 27, particularly.
Short introduction to the Psalms.
Well, we have to remember that in the Bible, not all the Bible are words from God to people.
The Bible also contains words spoken to God, and words spoken about God, and these also are the word of God. So a question will be, when we read any psalm, how can words spoken to God become a word from God to us? So just have that question somewhere in your mind.
And when we think of Psalms, we can think of five brief ideas to have in your mind when you read a Psalm.
1,
First thing is to remember that Psalms are poetry. Now, for some of you, poetry connects with you. You, however, may be like me and I find poetry difficult, yet poetry speaks to our mind through the heart. So the language of Psalms is deliberately emotive.
2.
Second thing is you’ll see in Psalms plenty of metaphors. Images used to describe the event or describe God. So a mighty fortress is our God or as we heard ‘’God is a stronghold’’. No, God is not a big mighty tower, on somewhere, but he can be seen like that. You see a lot of metaphors happening. You hear words in Psalm 27, about ‘’devouring my flesh’’, which doesn’t suggest that the enemies are zombies, but there’s a sense of how David is reacting, of how bad this experience feels as his enemies crowd around him. So his metaphors, which can be challenging for some of us, and also helpful for us others who are visual.
3.
The third thing is that the Psalms are not just poems, but they’re musical poems. They were to be sung. They are to be said out loud. That’s why to read the Psalms outside can be out loud, can be helpful for us. The Psalter was a songbook of the people of God as they gathered for worship.
4.
I said emotions.
John Calvin said about the psalms: ‘I have been accustomed to call this book, I think, not inappropriately ‘’An anatomy of all the parts of the soul,’’ for there is not an emotion of which any one can be conscious that is not here represented as in a mirror. Or rather the Holy Spirit has here, brought to life, all the griefs, sorrow, fears, doubts, hopes, cares, perplexities, in short, all the distracting emotions with which the minds of men and women are prone to be agitated about.’’
Psalms are a book of emotions. Many emotions. Perhaps the ones you would prefer not to share with your friends. And yet they’re on the pages of scripture.
5.
And finally, your fifth brief idea would be that the Psalms remind us that we are not guaranteed a pleasant, easy life as a follower of Christ. David, author of many of these had a difficult life from his various stages, from being a teenager towards an adult, from becoming a parent, and in his final years, as an old man, he often had a difficult life. Yet in many Psalms, he expresses trust. And praise, as the theologian Gordon Fee says, he models to us that God deserves praise for his greatness and goodness in spite of and in the midst of our misery.
The Psalms, when you read them, you see different types or genres. You’ll see there’s many types of lament, thanksgiving, hymns of praise, songs of trust, songs of celebration, psalms about God’s work and salvation, Psalms of wisdom and so on. There is variety there. So how can we use them? How can words spoken to God become a word from God to us?
Well, four top tips as a friend of mine would say.
Tip 1.
They’re a guide to worship. They’re a guide and a help for our worship. Psalms can be a formal way of expressing our feelings. Whether we want to praise God, appeal to him, remembers blessings. We may have a topic we want expressed to God. A psalm may help us find words.
Tip 2
The second thing is they show us how to relate honestly to God. The Psalms give us, by their example, true instruction on prayer. They encourage us, be honest before God. God can take it.
Tip 3.
Third thing is we read them. They remind us to reflect and meditate on what God has done for us in the past and his promises for us in this life. Many people talk about how busy life is. But the challenge is to have that time still to reflect and meditate on what God has done for us and his promises for us.
Tip 4.
And the fourth idea would be how the Psalms can be used. You could call them the springboard for prayer. When we read a psalm, we may say, that doesn’t apply to me. I don’t connect with that.
But as we think about it, it may remind us of people or a person who faces that need expressed in the psalm. So David, in Psalm 27, we see talks about severe opposition under attack, a feeling of being a target in a war. Well, you know, today, this is the first Sunday after Open Doors released a World Watch list where with clear, researched data, they list the top 50 countries where it’s hardest to live out your faith and based on last year’s data. www.opendoors.nl www.opendoorsuk.org
388 million Christians suffer high levels of persecution and discrimination for their faith in Jesus Christ. In the top 50 list alone, 315 million Christians today face very high or extreme persecution that works out as one in seven Christians in our world face that type of persecution.
So when we hear the word in the psalms about ‘enemies’ ‘devouring’ that may remind us, inspire us to pray for those persecuted brothers and sisters today who that Psalm is very real for. And if we think my life’s fine, so it can be a springboard to pray for others.
Psalm 27.
So let’s look at Psalm 27. You may want have your Bibles open. We’re not going to move through every verse, but to be just occasional verses we’ll come back to.
Psalm 27 is described as a song of trust, a song of trust in the God we worship. It’s one of my favorite Psalms. We already see in the Psalm that David is a realist. He doesn’t believe that because someone is godly, because someone follows God, that all their problems are solved.
You know, David was described as someone after God’s heart. It’s a high delight statement, somebody, it was after God’s heart, and yet he knew life was not straightforward. Verse two talks about adversaries and enemies. When evil men advance against me to devour my flesh, when my enemies and my foes attack me, they will stumble and fall.
But his words remind us, that there can be days when everything feels dark. Verse five talks about a day of trouble. Verse 11, there’s oppressors, verse 12, false witnesses, painful experiences he’s facing or has faced. And yet David says, whom shall I. Fear, the Lord is my light and my salvation.
Whom shall I fear? The Lord is a stronghold of my life. Of whom shall I be afraid even though I have enemies, oppressors, false witnesses? Whom shall I fear?
You know, one of the reasons the psalm is, is meaningful to me is that, years ago at university, I was involved in a situation where we had to set somebody free from demonic possession. And God worked powerfully. The person was set free, delivered in an amazing way. But that night when I went to bed, I remember I was quite anxious because of this experience, it was the first time I come across demonic possession and deliverance and stuff like that. And as I went to bed, I remember lying in bed and those words were going through my head as I slept, as I remembered them and hung onto them.
The Lord is my light and my salvation. Whom shall I fear? The Lord is a stronghold of my life. Of whom shall I be afraid?
No matter what fears I was facing me, because I didn’t know what was going happen that night, but there was that sense of putting the trust in the one who could protect and deliver.
Confidence
So David says, whom shall I fear? He talks about confidence instead of fear. And like I said, when you read through the Psalm, you see how David had reasons to be afraid. He uses those metaphors we’ve mentioned ‘advance against me like an army’, and yet the Message Bible translation say , ‘’I’m fearless, afraid of no one and nothing and collected and cool.’’
So what helped build his confidence? What caused him to say, whom shall I fear?
Worship
Well, the first thing we see, I would say is that it’s about worship. He talks about worship. The focus of his life is worship. He focused on that one thing, verse four, 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.
On a side note, the theologians here are maybe thinking, well, why would David mention a temple when his son Solomon built it? But. If you look at, for example, 1 Samuel 1 or 1 Samuel 3, before David was born, we read about the tent of meeting. Yet in these chapters we read of the tabernacle also occasionally called the temple. So it appears a temple language could be applied to the tent rather than only to something Solomon leader built. Also, because it is a metaphor, it may also simply point to the fact of that’s where he met God. If you remember in Genesis when Jacob is in the desert. He sees a ladder going up and down to heaven, and he talks about the house of God, yet he’s in the desert with a rock under his head. So, it’s not to get distracted by that temple word and saying, what’s going on here?
That one thing is a thing to focus on. David is focused on the one thing that is his one number one priority. It reminds us, as Nicky Gumbel says,
‘’we do not try and fit God into our plans. We make our plans around the priority of worship.’’
We do not try and fit God into our plans. We make our plans around the priority of worship as being the one thing, and by worship, he’s not talking about, I would say necessarily formal corporate worship like we were doing here. That’s part of it, but I think he’s simply focusing on a time set apart by him, David, to be alone or with others to worship the creator covenant, God. Corporate and / or personal worship.
When I was thinking about this, it’s easy to say, well, David didn’t really do very much, therefore for him it was really easy. But think how busy this guy was. I mean, if you think about it as a teenager, he is already in the military until his twenties, he is involved in many battles, many warfare. Later, he is being pursued by enemies, sent by King Saul. He’s running all over the place. And then as a king, he’s dealing with enemies around his nation. He’s a soldier, he is hunted, he’s a king.
And yet, regardless of where or when the psalm was written, worship remained his priority. Dedicated time set aside with the Lord, remained his priority, in the presence of the Lord. He sought to be in his presence. He desired, even though he had real demands, real pressures, real storms. One thing is what he focused upon.
Vision of worship
And David also gives us a bit of a vision for what worship is. 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. And in verse six, we hear at his tabernacle, will I sacrifice with shouts of joy? I will sing and make music to the Lord.
The phrase there to I want to pick up is the beauty of the Lord.
You know, would we call the Lord beautiful?
When we come here, do we want to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord?
Is that what we seek to do? Beauty? Maybe it help us what that can look like. What does that word beauty mean?
Well, in the New Testament, the, the Greek word for beauty is the same word used to described in Mark 7 for everything Jesus did. So Mark says in Greek, everything Jesus did was beautiful. Russian writer Dostoevsky described Jesus as ‘’positively beautiful.’
But Isaiah reminds us it isn’t about him being, physically beautiful, you know, in terms of look at. Isaiah 53 says that Jesus had no outward beauty. He grew up before him like a tender chute, like a root out of dry ground. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him. Nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.
As Isaiah said, he wouldn’t have been on Vogue Magazine and magazines like that. He had a different kind of beauty. The beauty of all he did. So David would say, as a follower, we gaze upon the beauty of the Lord Jesus. Of all he is. All he’s done, which we heard about in the gospel of healing, of good news, of salvation. The fact that he calls us, he believes in us more than we believe in ourselves. The fact that all sorts and all types could come and follow him. You just look at who those disciples were.
We gaze upon the beauty of the Lord in worship.
But then there’s two other elements here, which are, are, are mentioned.
Seeking and Learning
You know, it’s that confidence whom shall I fear worship, and then we hear about seeking. And learning. David says, this idea of 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 seek. And in verse 10, my heart says, seek his face.
Your face oh Lord, I will seek. And in verse 11, teach me your way. Oh Lord, lead me in a straight path because of my oppressors.
First of all is God who invites us to seek him. Seek his face, his heart (inspired by the Spirit) says.
The Holy Spirit is speaking to David, ‘come seek me’. But David makes a choice then to seek the Lord.
And I find this as a challenge because we can come to worship and the challenge of David for me is, do I seek the Lord? Do I want to meet him? Do I want be with him?
You know, one of hr stories I came across a while ago that challenged me deeply was the story from Tyler Staton, and I’ve told it once or twice here.
Now, Tyler Staton is a 24 7 prayer leader, but he talks about how in prayer, for some of us, we’ve become cynical about prayer.
For others, we don’t understand what prayer is.
But the third group of people is, it’s like going to the beach. So imagine you’re by the sea. You go into the beach and you go up to your knees and the water’s great. And do you go any further? Probably not. It’s great. It’s nice where I am. He says that’s what our faith can become like.
We’ve experienced some of the goodness of the Lord is like entering that water up to our knees and this is good and we don’t feel the need to go any further, but the Lord wants us to plunge. He wants us to go deep. He wants to take us into those currents that are gonna unsettle us and all that stuff. He wants us to swim. If you want use a biblical example in Ezekiel 47, Ezekiel has a choice. Stop walking after a bit in the river, but he keeps on going until he can’t go any further.
So I think that word seek makes me think, do I seek the Lord, not just worship him? Do I seek him? Do I want to go further with him?
Because that is the cry of David’s heart. I mean, can you imagine all that David is seeing, he saw God deliver him through Goliath. He’s talked about being protected by lions. If this is later in his life, he’s seen God deliver him from being chased place to place. He saw God bring peace into his nation and he still says, I will seek your face. There’s more of you that I want.
In fact, it gets more challenging for us the older he gets. ’cause he is really saying, it ain’t just when I’m young. I’m gonna seek you. I’m gonna seek you when I’m in my twenties, my thirties, when I’m middle age and when I’m old. So there’s something about seeking here, which challenges, and of course this idea of, he ties into that, teach me your way.
He’s open to being taught. It reminds us. Of how Jesus said, I’m the way of the truth in life. To follow Jesus’, to be a walker in the way the early Christians were called people of the way.
So he is willing to worship, to seek, and to be taught.
And I think these three things – as he lives them out : worship, seeking, learning – is what’s given him confidence.
So he can say, whom shall I fear? Because he’s worshiped, because he’s sought, because he is learned and been willing to be taught.
Confidence in goodness.
And probably that’s what’s led him to that beautiful phrase at the end, which is a challenge for some of us. But it’s a promise in God’s word.
I’m still confident of this. I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of living. Wait for the Lord, be strong and take heart. And wait for the Lord.
His worship, seeking His learning has taught him that his God is a good God, that he will see his goodness. But CS Lewis reminds us, that our vision of goodness may not be the same of what God’s view of goodness is, but Romans 12 says, I urge you, brothers and sisters, and view of God’s mercy to offer your bodies as living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God. This is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, and then you’ll be able to test and approve what God’s will is, is good, perfect and pleasing will.
Paul says, you’ll be able to test and approve what God’s will is, is good, pleasing, and perfect. Well
Confident in goodness.
To finish.
in verse five six, the message bible translation. When talking about whom shall I fear, the attitude of disciples says,
that’s the only quiet, secure place in a noisy world. God holds my head and shoulders above those who are trying to pull me down.
You know, Paul put it a different way, talking about his confidence, which I would’ve said would’ve come with him from worship seeking and learning, and I finish with these words, which are tremendously well known.
31 What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? 32
He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? 33
Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies.
34 Who then is the one who condemns? No one. Christ Jesus who died —more than that, who was raised to life —is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us.
35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? 36 As it is written:
“For your sake we face death all day long;
we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.”
37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, 39 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. Romans 8:31-39.
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?
Shall we pray? I’m gonna finish with an ancient old prayer from Colomba, the great Celtic Christian missionary saint.
It’ll read slowly, is quite complicated English, but it’s a beautiful prayer alone.
‘’Alone with none but thee my God
I journey on my way.
What need I fear, when thou art near,
O king of night and day?
More safe I am within they hand,
than if a host did round me stand.’’ Amen.