Where Do I Turn When it Feels Like Nothing is Going Right? | Psalm 37 | Jamie Rogers

Well, y'all, it has been an incredible week of vacation Bible school and VBX for our middle schoolers.

I mean, y'all caught a glimpse of it this morning.

I absolutely love VBS Week.

And there is so much life on our campus each day here during VBS Week.

And the morning contrasted with the afternoon, my goodness, I mean, it is night and day different.

It is like you kicked over an anthill during the mornings, and it is like a ghost town with tumbleweeds in the afternoons when everybody is gone and recovering for the next day.

I'll tell you, uh, last night, uh, Will, uh, our five-year-old, he woke up uh with a nosebleed in the middle of the night.

And so we were helping with his nosebleed and everything like that.

Got him back into the bed.

It's about 3:30 a.m.

at this point, and my head hits the pillow, and I'm trying to go back to sleep.

I'm like, I'm gonna preach you a few hours.

Illumination station.

Join the celebration.

Jesus.

It is just on repeat.

It has been drilled into our minds, and it has lodged its way into our hearts, and we are gonna be singing these songs.

Like, what better things would we want scrolling through our minds in the middle of the night than God's word?

I mean, it's incredible.

And you know, there are some times it's like, I'm tired of hearing this song.

And then there are other times where I was like, praise God for this.

I'm so thankful for this.

And the kids, they led us so beautifully this morning, and they learned this week the truth that Jesus is the light of the world.

Jesus is the light of the world.

And we get that from John chapter 8, verse 12 that they memorized this week and that they sang this week.

John 8:12

And we see that all throughout the Bible.

And this summer as a church, we're going through summer in the Psalms.

Each week we're looking at a different Psalm from the book of Psalms in the Old Testament.

And this week we're looking at Psalm 27, and there it begins as kind of a banner over this passage that the Lord is my light.

The Lord is my light and my salvation.

We'll be in Psalm 27 this morning, and there is a word for you here from God's word today.

It is no accident that you are here.

He desires to speak to you right where you're at.

And so as we come to God's word, something I like to do each week is I like to pray.

God, would you give us eyes to see?

And would you give us ears to hear?

God, would you please speak to us?

The prayer that Samuel prayed in the Old Testament.

God, please speak.

For I'm ready to listen.

And so let's go together to the Lord.

Let's open ourselves up for prayer and for what God might speak to us today.

Let's pray.

God, that you would give us ears to hear.

God, we pray that you would speak.

For we, your servants, are listening.

It's through Christ we pray.

Amen.

So Psalm 27 is written by David.

That's King David, the same David that slew Goliath, right, with the rock and the sling.

That David.

And I love David, he wrote so many of the Psalms, and people throughout all throughout history have called him the warrior poet.

Right?

The singing soldier.

And there are a lot of times, like, especially kind of like within modern conceptions of humanity, like the manly thing to do is like when we're all singing, just to kind of stand there gruff like this.

But really, in the Bible, and what we see throughout God's word, is it is those who are so in tune with him and have seen and enjoyed God that they are the most joyful and exuberant, and it is not a mark of femininity, but of masculinity to be able to stand up and to shout and to sing boldly the truth of God's word.

And so for David in Psalm 27, this is what he says: 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?

You see it there on the screens.

You see it in your copy of God's Word.

In a lot of our English translations of the Bible, you see Lord, there is in all caps.

That is our English translator's way of trying to show us that that is the name Yahweh, or depending on the vowel pointings in the Hebrew, Jehovah, you might have heard.

That this is the covenant name of God.

When God revealed himself to Moses at the burning bush, and he said, I am who I am, Yahweh.

I am the Lord, the covenant-making, the covenant-keeping God, the God of Israel, the one who provides for and oversees his people.

The Lord is my light and my salvation.

And as I was meditating over this verse this week, and we we learned a couple of weeks ago, right, meditating, Christian meditating is not like an emptying of yourself and going, oh, right?

You know, that's not meditating.

It's not an emptying of yourself, but a filling up of yourself of God's word.

And so as I was chewing on this passage, that the Lord is my light and my salvation.

You really have to ask the question, well, what does light do?

What does light do?

Well, one of the first things that light does is light helps us to see, right?

Um, I did not coordinate this with our tech team, so we're not going to do it this morning.

But if we had cut all of the lights in here this morning, right, it would be difficult to see.

I have been in some caverns.

Uh, there was uh some caverns in Alabama, uh DeSoto caverns that I went to many field trips growing up.

And you go in there, and there is one part of the cavern tour where they turn off all the lights, and you think you've been in total darkness before?

You have not been in total darkness until you have been in cavern darkness.

No lights.

You can put your hand up in front of your face just like this, and you cannot see your fingers wiggle, right?

Complete darkness.

Without light, we are unable to see.

Light helps us to see.

Well, light, it also helps us to enjoy.

It helps us to enjoy things, right?

I even this morning, right?

Okay, so I have this same spot that I sit every single morning with my cup of coffee and my Bible.

And I sit there, it's on the right side of the little love seat in our living room, and I sit there because when I look out the window, it's dark.

And then over the course of that time in the morning, the sun starts to come up, and I can see the light shining through the canopy and making its way into my living room.

Like we see the light, we can enjoy the light, whether it's a sunrise, a sunset, or the lights that we've been able to see, the lights that are blinking over here.

Okay, yep, right there, blinking still, good.

And so, like, you can enjoy because of the light.

And then the third thing that light does is light enables growth.

We've been planting a little garden in some raised beds, my wife and my sons, they've been taking that on as a little summer project.

And you are able to see as the plants start to grow up and as the flowers start to orient themselves towards the light.

And the light helps the plants to grow.

Light helps us to see, light helps us to enjoy, light helps us to grow.

And these are all pointers to God.

The Lord is my light.

The Lord helps me to see.

God's word would say that we are all spiritually blind, that we are wandering around in the darkness.

But Jesus has come as the light of the world that we might see again.

That God is my light.

He helps us to enjoy that.

We think that there are so many things here in this world that will give us satisfaction, that will give us joy, but we can get those things, and it's never enough.

We chase what's next.

We chase the next high, we chase the next fulfillment, we chase the next accomplishment, and we get there and we're like, really?

It's like Tom Brady, he's the goat.

He's won more Super Bowls than anybody.

And he gets there after getting multiple Super Bowls, and he says, This is it.

This is all.

I expected to feel more.

And then light helps us to grow.

That on our own we feel stagnant, we feel plateaued, we feel that there is no sort of progress, that we are working against ourselves and tripping up all over the place.

But God has shown us the way of growth and of flourishing, and it's not curved in on ourselves.

It's not just looking out for me, myself, and I, but it is face up to his glory and our neighbor's good, and that we now, with his commission and his commandment, love others and share his good news.

That God is my light and my salvation.

That word my is very important.

We have learned this week that Jesus is the light of the world.

There is that objective truth.

Whether people recognize it or not, whether or not people assent to it, it doesn't make it any less true.

Jesus is the light of the world.

We also need the subjective component of that as well.

It is not enough to simply assent that Jesus is the light of the world.

Are you able to say that the Lord is my light?

That he is the stronghold of my life.

You see, David, King David, he had plenty of problems going on in his life.

And David was far from perfect.

With all of the children present, we will not get into all of those details here today.

But I will tell you this the Bible is not boring, and the Bible could come with some uh rating labels at certain points and chapters and different things like that, right?

But King David, far from perfect.

But King David, as he was getting ready to come onto his throne, King Saul before him tried multiple times to pin him to the wall with a spear.

Tried to, yeah, whoa, that's right.

Tried to skewer him like a pig.

Like that there were multiple times.

He was off and running in the wilderness.

David, there was a lot that was going on in his life.

His life was not always Instagram worthy.

His life was not always something that would be featured in the expose of a magazine.

There were a lot of times he was on the run, he was hunted like an animal, and he was far from those that he loved and everything that he knew.

And David, even in the midst of all of those adverse circumstances, could say, The Lord is my light and my salvation.

Here it is.

Whom shall I fear?

I don't know about you.

I mean, the things that I've described here in the recent few moments, like that's a lot that would cause fear in anybody, right?

Like that guy's hunting me.

Like I'm physically being hunted.

But the Lord, he is my light and my salvation.

Whom shall I fear?

He was able to see time and time again, God come through and deliver him.

And even if his life did end in death, that he would still have his reward.

That he would still have the God of his life.

And so for us who hear this and who know and follow God and have that same confidence, you can write in this truth.

When God is your light and salvation, there's no reason to fear.

David had God as the light of his life.

He had him as his salvation.

And this was no empty bravado.

This was no kind of macho ignorance.

It's not even self-confidence that's good at some healthy levels, right?

No, this isn't self-confidence, this is God confidence.

That God confidence.

And you know what?

I think that's it's not often that I will like recommend uh children's Bible movies and different things like that.

But there is a newer children's Bible movie called David.

It's just called David.

I see some head nods, some of you have seen this.

Y'all, it's good, and it's free on Netflix right now, so just letting you know, all right?

Pro tip.

We watch that movie David, and I think one of the incredible things that that movie does is it captures the utter God confidence that David has.

Especially like in the scene with Goliath, right, my boys?

They love watching that scene over and over again.

Even at our dinner table last night, they were quoting that scene one to another.

Do you think this is a game?

Right?

Like that's what one of the things Goliath says, okay?

And so David, he's a young shepherd boy.

And he comes, he's checking, he's bringing provisions for his older brothers.

And when he arrives, there is this Philistine, this giant, this enemy of God that is standing out there taunting as their champion, calling forth someone to battle against him.

And so David, he goes out there with King Saul's blessing, with Jonathan's blessing, and as he goes, and Goliath starts taunting him.

He he starts smack talking against David.

He's like, You coming against me with sticks?

And David, who has every reason to think, that guy is going to grind me to dust.

He filled with this God confidence.

He who knows that God is his light and salvation.

He says, I don't come to you with sword and spear.

But I come to you in the name of the Lord of Israel, whom you defy here today, and he will give you into my hand.

This is not God confidence.

This is not saying I've been hitting the weight room.

This is not saying I've been practicing with this and that and the other.

But no, utter God confidence that he will come through.

That David had seen God come through in his life again and again.

And it had inculcated a kind of trust that regardless of what was happening in the circumstance around, he would be able to say, God's got this.

God has got this.

And so when God is your light and your salvation, there's no reason to fear.

There is no reason to fear.

And so you might be here this morning and you're afraid.

There's a lot in this world that is fear-inducing.

And I'm here to tell you this morning, if you are outside of Christ, you have every reason to be afraid.

But it does not have to be this way.

You can have the confidence, the assurance, the God confidence that He's got this.

That the worst thing that could happen in your life, for you to lose your life, Paul would say, the Apostle Paul in the New Testament would say, to live is Christ.

And to die, it's not loss.

It's gain.

It's gain.

And so you might be fearful of pain or death or loneliness or the unknown or not being in control this morning.

I'm here to tell you today, you can be free of fear in a life with God.

With God as your light and your salvation.

You can be filled with God confidence that puts boldness in your soul and steel in your spine.

You can walk through this world completely different than everyone else around you.

That God, being our light, changes everything about us.

We're able to see this.

David would also write in Psalm 34, just a few chapters later.

There in Psalm 34, verses 4 and 5, I sought the Lord, and he answered me and delivered me from all my fears.

Psalms 34:4

There it is.

And those who look to him are radiant, are shining, and their faces should never be ashamed.

Or Paul in the New Testament, Romans chapter 8, one of the most glorious chapters in all of the Bible, there in verse 15, where he says this, that for those who are in Christ, you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear.

Romans 8 · chapter mention

That's not what God wants for you.

He doesn't want you to be a slave.

He doesn't want you to be constrained or restrained by your fear.

But no, we have received the spirit of adoption as sons by whom we cry out, Abba, Father.

You can be free of fear in Christ this morning.

I tell you, I saw this and I was encouraged and I was challenged this week by a group of our students right here.

It was, I guess, was it Tuesday or Wednesday, one of those days, Spencer?

A lot of these students right here had been working vacation Bible school as youth volunteers during the day.

And y'all, we all know there's no tired like BBS tired, right?

That's right.

Amen.

But this group of students, uh, they had just gotten back, some of them, from the mission trip to Charleston.

We received them back last Saturday.

Where they were on a mission trip and where they were sharing the gospel, planting seeds all over Charleston.

And one of the incredible things, like this is why we do short-term mission trips, is because it changes people.

And you start to see where you live as a mission field.

And so these students, after multiple days of VBS, decide to get together, they go get some bottled water, and they, without Spencer's leadership, without my leadership, without any other sort of adult leadership, pull together and say, we're gonna go hand out water down by the river walk, pray for people and share the gospel.

Yeah, clap.

That's that's clapworthy right there.

Yeah.

Fearless.

If I were to come up to you, some of you, and say, all right, well, hey, this upcoming Tuesday afternoon, clear your schedule, we're getting some water, meet me at the river, we're gonna share the gospel and pray for people.

Some of you be like, uh, uh, uh, uh.

In full confession, there is a part of me that'd be like, uh, uh, uh, uh.

But these students who have experienced that God is my light and my salvation, whom shall I fear?

I don't need to fear rejection.

I don't need to ref, I don't need to fear awkward conversations, I don't need to fear stepping outside of my comfort zone.

Like God is my light.

And he is shining through me.

He desires to shine through me, he has changed me, and now I want him to change other people.

The Lord is my light, he's my salvation.

Whom shall I fear?

The Lord is the stronghold of my life.

Of whom shall I be afraid?

God does not want you to go through this life paralyzed and restrained by fear.

Rather, he would have you be active and free.

This is what he purchased for you.

That he made possible through Jesus' death and resurrection for you to be free of your sin, to be rid of your blindness, and to have forgiveness and righteousness and sight.

That he died to take away your sins, he rose to give you new life.

And because God, because He is my light, I can see the danger.

And because He is my light, I can see that He has already defeated my enemies.

That there is nothing more for me to do.

I believed Jesus when He said, It is finished.

And when Jesus taught, yes, the body they may kill.

But what more can they do?

Why be afraid of that?

For us, we are free to love and serve those around us.

We trust God has freed us.

That Jesus, he is the light of the world.

The Lord is my light and my salvation.

Is he your light and salvation?

Is he the stronghold of your life?

Have you placed your faith, your trust in Christ?

Not in just some sort of like southern cultural feature of like, yeah, I went to church, I went to VBS when I was a kid, I am a good person morally, I think I've done a little bit more good than bad in my life, but no.

Have you repented, disowned your sin in your flesh, and believed that Jesus died for your sins to forgive you and he wants a relationship with you forever?

Is it not just something that you do a couple of times a year or to satisfy a checkbox or a pestering family member?

Or is he the one who has totally rearranged your life so that it is falling in with his word and his ways?

I love the way that C.S.

Lewis, that 20th-century theologian and apologist, the way that he said this.

I believe in Christianity as I believe the sun has risen.

Not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.

It is now in the light of the Lord that we clearly see the rest of our lives.

And it's not like he is just the first on a long list of priorities.

No, Jesus is the gravitational center around which everything else in our life orbits.

Look at this in verse four.

David continues there, and he says, one thing, one thing I have asked of the Lord, that I will seek after, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in his temple.

I almost did this as an experiment this week.

If I were to go up to all of the kiddos at VBS and said, All right, you get one wish.

What's one thing that you could have?

I'm not a genie.

I can't do three, but what's one?

What's one thing that you'd want?

I'd probably get some pretty hilarious answers, right?

I'd probably get some things that spanned all across the map.

Some that would be very expensive, and some that would be kind of head scratching.

Like, that's one thing.

Like you can ask for anything, and you ask for that, right?

But what is one thing?

And David, he proclaims that he had asked God for one thing.

And what is that one thing?

That he may dwell in the house of the Lord all of the days of his life.

To gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in his temple.

The one thing, mentioned three different ways, is to be in the presence of God.

To be in the presence of the Lord.

And to gaze upon his beauty, to inquire in his temple.

If you look at all of those, it seems like some of the things that the light of God's presence does for us, right?

Helps us to see, helps us to enjoy, helps us to grow.

That if we are in his presence, that he who himself is light, who robes himself in light like we heard this morning.

That David's one thing is to be in the presence of God.

I've already said God's word is not boring.

I'm here to tell you this morning, being in God's presence is not boring.

Being a part of his people where his presence now dwells is not boring.

A relationship with God is not bland.

And I'm here to tell you this morning, if you're bored in church, something is wrong with that church or something's wrong with you.

Because, I mean, sometimes things are wrong with the church, with the leadership, with people.

Sometimes you have unbelievers in there, right?

Who are masquerading as those who are believers.

Sometimes things are wrong with the church.

Sometimes things are wrong with us, but there is nothing ever wrong with God.

There's nothing wrong with his presence.

And to desire to be in his presence is a worthy one thing.

The one thing that I've asked of God.

The one thing that I would seek after, that I may dwell upon his beauty, his perfection, his splendor, his glory, and it can be gazed upon forever and can never grow old.

You can't say God is beautiful with a straight face.

In the same way that, like, with a sunset or a beautiful piece of music, or talking to your wife, right?

You look beautiful.

Yep, that's true.

Try again, right?

Try again.

Because you said the words, but your heart wasn't in it.

You had the right letters and syllables in the right places, but there was no feeling in it.

God, you are beautiful.

And it's not because of anything that we would necessarily be able to see or point to, like we're talking about with another person.

Because we're able to see in Isaiah chapter 53, there, when Jesus prophesied hundreds of years ahead of time as the suffering servant.

Isaiah 53 · chapter mention

There, Isaiah, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, would say, There was no form or beauty that we should be attracted to him, that we should be drawn into him based on what he looked like.

But rather, he was numbered among the transgressors.

By his stripes, we are healed.

He was like one that we would hide our faces from.

But so it's it's no sort of like physical attributes of beauty, but rather it is a beauty in what he has done on our behalf.

It is a beauty of him substituting himself in our place, where we were supposed to go forward, where we, because of our sin, were supposed to be humiliated, embarrassed, and stretched wide, and receiving death as the payment for our sins.

Jesus, the sinless Son of God, God's promised, perfect, powerful, and proven Son as the fulfillment of the plan for the forgiveness of sins, said, I will take their sin, and I will give them my right standing with God.

I will remove, I will take, I will bear their punishment that they might have life and life to the full.

And he died there at the cross, and our sins died with him.

And when he was laid in the tomb, and he was buried for three days, and on the third day, he rose again from the dead.

And our sins did not come out with him.

But rather, he slew death by the abundance of his life.

And he now holds the keys.

You don't have to find it, you don't have to search for it, you don't have to pay for it when you get there.

Jesus has said, I am the way, the truth, and the life.

No one comes to the Father except through me.

You do not have to bring anything to the table.

You simply have to come and receive.

The Lord who made everything, the Lord who knows you, knows the worst things about you, loves you even still.

He paid for your sins.

Why?

Because he wants to be with you forever.

The greatest problem in your life, you might have a lot of problems.

You might have got 99 problems.

You have a lot, but I'll tell you, you have one problem that far surpasses them all.

And it is the problem of presence.

Not like wrapped presence under a Christmas tree, but presence, like being around somebody on our own and in our sin, we cannot be in the presence of God.

That is your greatest problem.

That is your most lasting, eternal, significant problem.

And I know a lot, I know most of you in here, and you are dealing with some significant problems in your life.

But all of those problems could be fixed.

And if you do not have the greatest problem in your life fixed, the problem of presence, you could have the most picture-perfect life and still be going to hell.

But Jesus has come.

So that as Emmanuel, God with us, come to our presence to bring us into the presence of his Father.

This being in God's presence is the one thing that David desired.

The one thing that he wanted more than anything else.

You can write this truth in.

When God is your one thing, you will be satisfied.

And so I'm here to ask you this morning, what's your one thing?

And if your one thing is anything other than God Himself, it's like you're drinking salt water.

Drinking salt water.

You could be drinking it and drinking it, it promises to quench your thirst, but it only accelerates your dehydration.

The more that you chase it, the more desperate you become.

No matter how much you drink, it cannot satisfy you, it cannot sustain you.

And if you continue on, it will ultimately kill you.

But God, He is the living water.

One drink, and you will never thirst the same way again.

He is the living water, the light of the world.

He is satisfying and beautiful.

He makes us to see, enjoy, and grow.

That He is our light and our salvation.

He is the only one that can be our one thing.

If it's anything else, it's less than.

It'll never satisfy.

It will never make you happy.

But you can find life this morning.

You don't have to wander in the darkness.

You don't have to keep wondering and searching and looking.

It is here for you this morning.

And we'll tell you the same way that we told our children here this week.

All you have to do is admit to God that you're a sinner and repent.

Turn away from your sin-dead ways of living.

And B.

Believe that Jesus is the Son of God, that He loves you, that He came for you so that you could be in God's presence again.

And C, confess your faith.

Declare your faith in Jesus as Savior, the one who has saved you from your sins and is your Lord, the King of your life, your champion, the one who leads you and is now leading you here today.

If you don't know this, if you don't know this Jesus, if you don't know this life, do not let this day pass without a relationship with him.

He is the one thing.

Let us pray.

Gracious Heavenly Father, we thank you that you sent your Son into this world to be the light of the world.

So that we might see.

See you, to see ourselves, to see the gap in between, but to see how you made a way for us.

And God, that we might enjoy you and enjoy your presence forever.

And God, that we might grow.

That we can be different.

We can be changed.

And God, in a world with so many things that are competing for our time, attention, resources, our passions and our loves, God, would you orient all of us back to our original design to worship you and to enjoy you as our one thing.

And so, God, would we desire your presence?

Would we desire you above all else?

And would we see everything else in your light?

We ask this in the strong name of Jesus.

Amen.