"One Thing" Psalm 27 Sunday Morning Worship Service

Psalm twenty-seven is a psalm of David.

Yahweh is my light and my salvation.

Whom shall I fear?

Yahweh is the stronghold of my life, of whom shall I be afraid?

When evildoers assail me to eat up my flesh, my adversaries and foes, it's they who stumble and fall.

Though an army encamp against me, my heart shall not fear.

Though war rise against me, yet I will be confident.

One thing I have asked of Yahweh that I will seek after, that I may dwell in the house of Yahweh all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of Yahweh and to inquire in his temple.

For he will hide me in his shelter in the day of trouble.

He will conceal me under the cover of his tent, he will lift me high upon a rock.

And now my head shall be lifted up above my enemies all around me, and I will offer in his tent sacrifices with shouts of joy, and I will sing and will make melody to Yahweh.

Hear, O Yahweh, when I cry aloud, be gracious to me and answer me.

You have said, Seek my face.

My heart says to you, Your face, Yahweh, I do seek.

Hide not your face from me.

Turn not your servant away in anger, O you who have been my help.

Cast me not off, forsake me not, O God of my salvation.

For my father and mother, they have forsaken me, but Yahweh will take me in.

Teach me your way, O Yahweh, and lead me on a level path because of my enemies.

Give me not up to the will of my adversaries, for false witnesses have risen against me, and they breathe out violence.

I believe that I shall look upon the goodness of Yahweh in the land of the living.

Wait for Yahweh.

Be strong.

Let your heart take courage.

Wait for Yahweh.

This is the time where people make New Year's resolutions.

And I like New Year's resolutions.

I think they are good.

They show an introspection to yourself.

They show an awareness of your own deficiencies.

They show forward looking that you're looking at what's ahead, aware of where you've been deficient before, and you want to make corrections by God's grace.

Of course, resolutions can go too far and can focus too much on human effort.

But I do think that generally speaking, they can be an important part of spiritual growth.

Oftentimes, resolutions can be a bit of a window into the soul.

I suppose suppose there's some resolutions that are just practical.

You know, a sales manager might say, I resolve to make changes to grow sales 5% in this department, or something like that.

That's not necessarily a window into the soul.

But when you're making spiritual resolutions, that often is a window into the soul.

It shows you what you value, what you pursue, how you view yourself in light of who you see God to be.

And Psalm 27 reads a bit like that.

Psalm 27, verse 4, which is the heart of the psalm, it's David's resolution.

Psalms 27:4

David has rubbed the lamp, and the genie has said, I give you one wish, not three, one wish.

And David doesn't hesitate.

One thing I've asked of Yahweh, he says in verse 4, that I will seek after.

So it's forward looking.

He says, There's one thing I want, and it is, as I said, forward looking.

He's looking to the horizon of the year in front of them.

He's looking in the future, and he says, There's only one thing I want this year.

There's one thing I will devote myself to pursuing, and here's that one thing.

And he's going to list three things, and that just, I love that.

That's such a preacher move, isn't it?

Here's one point today, and I'll put it in three points on the screen.

One thing I've asked of Yahweh, one thing I will seek after, that I will dwell in the house of Yahweh all the days of my life.

That I will gaze upon the beauty of Yahweh and inquire in his temple.

Now, those three things really are the same thing.

He says he wants to, the middle one is the important one here.

He wants to look at the beauty of the Lord.

That's what he wants.

He wants to gaze, it's just a word that means to cast for your eyes for a long period of time.

Not a glance, not just a watch, but a gaze.

He wants to stare longingly.

He's taking it in.

That's gaze.

So you might watch TV, your eyes glaze over, you might look at something over there, you might something might catch your eye over there.

None of the Hebrew has all those words, that's none of them.

This is the word for casting your affections through your eyes at something that you're taking it in.

Gaze is a great English translation of it.

I want to gaze at God's beauty.

I want to get a glimpse of God's beauty.

I want to set my eyes on it.

I want to drink it in.

I do not want to take my eyes off of the beauty of the Lord.

That's what he wants.

Now it's packaged, very interestingly, it's packaged here in the house of Yahweh.

And if you recall, the house of Yahweh is what David wanted to build, and God told him no.

David asked the Lord, can he build him a house to put the ark in the Ark of the Covenant?

He wants to build a house for God to dwell in and for the Ark of the Covenant to be there.

Nathan the prophet originally told David yes.

Then God rebuked Nathan and said, You know, don't speak for me unless I give you the words.

Go back and tell David, no, because he's a man of bloodshed.

So David could not build the temple.

But he wants to.

So bad.

He doesn't just want to build it.

He wants to go there.

He wants to sit down in the Holy of Holies.

He wants to get as close as he can to the beauty of the Lord.

That's what he wants.

Now, this is a psalm that is filled, it's filled with enemies.

This psalm was not written at Disneyland.

This psalm is written when David was on the run for his life.

I think the psalm was written when David was in exile.

He'd become king, but he was run out of his country by his son Absalom.

Things were not well in his world.

In fact, when you read through the Psalm and highlight all the enemies David has in the Psalm, which I did, I highlighted it in red as I read through this.

I'll draw your eyes to it.

Verse 2, when evildoers assail me.

Middle of verse 3, the war rise against me.

Verse 6, my enemies are all around me.

Verse 9, cast me not off, forsake me not, and that's addressed to God.

Verse 10, my father and my mother have forsaken me.

Verse 11, my enemies have disrupted my path.

Verse 12, don't give me over to the will of my adversaries.

Again, verse 12, false witnesses have risen against me.

So David is surrounded by enemies.

That's this psalm.

Bad things are happening to David.

But the psalm is also riddled with confidence.

I went through and highlighted everything that shows his confidence in the green here.

Verse 1, of whom shall I be afraid?

Verse 2, it's they who stumble and fall.

Verse 3, my heart will not fear.

Verse 3, I will be confident.

Verse 5, he will hide me, he will conceal me.

Verse 6, my head will be lifted up.

Verse 10, Yahweh will take me in.

I mentioned red and green because it looks like a Christmas psalm now.

It's red and green all over the place.

He's surrounded by his enemies, and yet he has so much confidence in the middle of this.

And this is how David has lived his life, isn't it?

David was training for this since he was a kid.

Do you remember the prophet Samuel found him and made him king?

And things did not go well from that point forward.

His last peaceful day was with the sheep was yesterday.

And God makes him king.

He says, You're a man after my own heart.

But people don't recognize him as king.

His family doesn't recognize him as king.

Although it happened in front of his family.

When war came and the Philistines attacked, they parked David with the sheep.

The brothers went out to war.

Nobody would fight Goliath.

David comes finally to fight Goliath.

He's mocked and ridiculed even by his own king.

He steps forward, puts Goliath to death, chops off his head with a sword, and yet he's still not received as king.

He gets closer to the throne.

He marries in to Saul's family.

He marries into the king's family.

That's a step in the right direction, you might say.

He kills 10,000 people.

And yet Saul grows bitter at him, and Saul purposes to put him to death.

David goes on the run.

Saul pursues him.

And that's the rest of 1 Samuel, isn't it?

David is constantly trapped in fear of his life.

He hides in caves to get away.

He leaves Israel.

He makes alliances with kings that are enemies of Israel.

He feigns madness at one point.

He double crosses Israel.

He double crosses his enemies.

At one point, he has to scurry up a rock, and he's held at the top of a kind of a rocky incline with the people trying to kill him all around the base of the rock, and the image is almost like they're grabbing at his heels.

At the last minute, they're summoned away.

David spent decades afraid for his own life with Saul trying to put him to death.

And when he became king, it didn't get any easier.

When he became king, all that trouble came home.

He had one son that sexually assaulted one of his daughters.

He had another son who murdered one of his sons.

In fact, Absalom, if you recall, took to ride, Absalom, David's son, took to riding in the king's chariot, up and down the streets of Jerusalem, finding people that had disputes and settling their disputes, seeing what people's problems were.

David was, in a sense, an absent king.

He was either fighting wars or holed up in his house.

He wasn't dealing with the affairs of Israel.

And Absalom was.

So Absalom made friends with everybody as he settled all their disputes from the sitting in the king's chariot.

The author of 2 Samuel says it got to the point where the Israelites loved Absalom more than David.

Finally, Absalom turns the military and David's own advisors against him and runs David out of the country.

He's run off.

Goes back up the canyon towards Jericho, leaves Jerusalem, goes through Jericho, doesn't even stop, goes back across the Jordan River.

He's retracing how the Israelites entered the promised land.

He's doing that walk backwards.

He goes back off to Moab and hides in a cave out there.

He's back to hiding again.

I think that's where he wrote the psalm.

Run out of country, his family in disarray, his nation in opposition to him.

What would you pray for in that scenario?

In light of all the things that just happened to David?

If that happened to you, what would you pray for?

That kind of strife in your family?

That kind of hatred of yourself, lies and false witnesses.

So much of the things that Absalom said about David that the other people caught onto weren't even true.

People are lying about you, kids rebelling, even murdering each other.

And you're forced to flee.

What do you pray for?

And that's where verse 4 comes into focus.

David says, There's one thing that I'm praying for.

I just want to see the beauty of God.

And that's it.

That's where the Psalm begins.

Yahweh in verse 1 is my light and my salvation.

He starts by declaring that God is light.

This is a common biblical declaration.

It's not unique here.

We know it from the New Testament, a memory verse for many of us.

1 John chapter 1.

1 John 1 · chapter mention

God is light.

In him there is no darkness at all.

Whoever says he loves the light but walks in the darkness is a liar.

I mean, this is that phrase.

God is light.

Isaiah says the same thing.

That God is a light that shines.

If God is light, we are to walk in the light.

We are supposed to live like God commands us to live.

That's where David begins.

God is light.

Now, if God is light, what does that say about God?

Well, it says that God is illuminating.

It's Isaiah 10, verse 17, God is light.

Isaiah 10:17

That God reveals.

God doesn't hide, he reveals.

That's what light is.

Light is morally pure and it reveals.

It shows the truth.

God is also truth.

So when the Bible says God is light and God is truth, that's in a sense the same thing.

God is self-revealing.

That's in the nature of God.

He's always giving of himself, he's always shining.

The light is always on.

There's no off-switch with God.

He's always on, he's always shining, and he's always revealing himself.

God is light and he is truth, so he is self-revealing.

There's another way of saying that.

And he has been self-revealing even before he created the earth.

God is light when there is before day one of creation, where he separates light from darkness.

God was light before he separated light from darkness.

God is light when there is only light.

God is always revealing to himself.

God shares all of himself.

The Father is light, of course, and he shines all of his existence, all of his attributes, and that light is the Son.

God reveals himself and is reveals all of himself, and that is the Son.

And the Father and the Son, they reveal all of themselves, and that is the Holy Spirit.

God truly is spirit.

God is light.

He is self-revealing and self-giving.

And there is no part of God that he does not shine.

This is why you can really say that the essence of God and the persons of God are the same thing.

Because the persons of God just reveal the essence.

And God shines all of himself from the Father to the Son, all of Himself, from the Father and Son to the Spirit.

God truly is light.

And this is so you have to be a Trinitarian God.

Gods of other religions are not light.

Because they don't have anybody to shine to, they don't have everybody to give to, everybody to reveal themselves to.

They have to create the world in order to reveal themselves to somebody, not God.

The true God, the true God of the Bible, is constantly revealing and constantly giving of himself to himself.

And that's where David starts.

He starts in eternity with God being light.

God, of course, because he's light, is salvation.

God doesn't want to be darkness.

He wants to save and reveal Yahweh is the stronghold of my life, David says.

This life has shined into the world, and David bypasses the thousands of years from creation to David, and the light shines right to David to be his stronghold.

Stronghold is a phrase that David would be familiar with.

The stronghold is a high ground where you can go up to and find safety and refuge.

David often hid in caves.

Those were his strongholds.

The caves he hid in were down by Engedi, where Masada is.

That was Herod, the butcher of Babylon.

That was his stronghold.

He built it on the tallest mountain up there where nobody could get to him.

That's long after David's life, of course, but the principle is that that was the place where David was.

In those hills, in those caves, David hid in them, and you can't attack somebody in a stronghold.

Somebody's up in a cave, how can you get to him?

You climb up the side of the mountain and you just shoot an arrow straight down, knock, kick dirt off the edge, and it knocks the guy off, you know?

You can't attack somebody in that kind of stronghold.

And that's where David goes.

And he says, God is his stronghold.

So David, who may literally be in his stronghold while he's writing this, says, God is my stronghold.

And then he asks this question How can I be afraid?

If that's all true, if God is light and God is salvation, why would I be afraid?

Why would I be afraid?

Evildoers can assail in verse 2.

But my adversaries, they will stumble and fall.

You know, if you're in the military, would you rather have more soldiers on your side or the sun on your side?

That's David's logic here.

My enemies have way more people than me, but the sun is with me.

You know, my enemies, they may outnumber me, but they will stumble and fall.

That's darkness language.

They don't have the light.

I have the light.

Yahweh is the light, and I'm with him.

I'm not afraid of them.

They can attack me, but they can't see.

They're gonna fall.

The army encamps against me, my heart won't be afraid.

War rises against me, I'm confident.

Why can he be so confident?

Because there's only one thing that he wants.

He wants to see and gaze upon the beauty of God.

So, what is beauty?

This is something that philosophers argue about and try to define.

Beauty is symmetry, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

You know, we can agree to disagree on what beauty is, and that's where most people in the Western world are, is yeah, it's beauty is totally subjective, there's no objective criteria for beauty, and we can agree to disagree, and then you point at an ugly painting and you're like, I think that's beautiful, and the person's like, well, you're wrong.

So what is true beauty?

True beauty is anything that corresponds to the being of God, the essence of God.

That's beauty.

Everything else in the world might have a derived beauty.

Things in the world can be beautiful, but only in as much as they correspond to God.

And if they're contrary to God, they're ugly.

Now we understand that very easily with so many other things in the world, like righteousness.

We understand that only God is righteous, He alone is righteous, and something else can be righteous only in as much as it corresponds to God's righteousness.

Something originates in the human heart, not righteous.

Something originates with God, righteous.

Human beings can have righteousness if God gives it to them, or if we do something that corresponds to God.

Or goodness, only God is good.

We all, I think most of us understand that.

Goodness, something is good if it relates to God in God's character.

Something that doesn't relate to God is not good.

It's more likely going to be evil or just phalon meaninglessness.

But something is good as it corresponds to God.

Holiness.

Only God is truly holy.

Other things might be holy if they're set aside for use by God.

So we get holiness, righteousness, love.

God is love.

We have love because he first loved us.

So we get that righteousness, love, holiness.

Those things, good, truth.

Only God is true.

God defines truth.

Something is true if it corresponds to God and God's character.

Other things that aren't God can be true, but only if they correspond to God.

But beauty is the same way.

Only God is beautiful.

And something else can be beautiful if it corresponds to God and who he is.

Now, the thing with God's attributes is I just described them like that.

You understand the essence of God, the nature of God, it's undivided.

God in his person is not made up of parts.

There's not, you don't get righteousness and justice and beauty and mercy and love and mix them together and get God.

No, God has one essence.

He's one being, and that being is undivided.

It's not made up of parts.

So when you say that God is truth and goodness and justice and love and all those things, that's just us trying to get our mind around what God is, because He's infinite and we can only see parts of Him at a time, and so we describe what we see.

But you understand that God is all of those things at one point.

One time, all the time.

He's only always righteousness.

He's only always justice and goodness and love and mercy and beauty.

He's all of those things at maximum degree.

He's constantly shining himself.

He is light and he's always shining himself.

He's pure beauty.

All the time.

So you can't divide that up.

You just look at him.

And that's what David wants to do.

David says, I just want to see God and his beauty.

To see God is, of course, to see his beauty.

And that's all that David wants to do.

We're going to spend eternity doing this, by the way.

Revelation 21 says, in the new heavens and the new earth, there's no sun because God is the light.

Can you imagine?

You know, you just can only see God all the time.

And there's this idea that you could understand God or get bored.

Eternity is forever, you know?

That's what the word means.

You're gonna be in heaven studying God forever.

Are you gonna get bored?

No, because he's constantly and infinitely all of those things at once, and he's always shining, he's always revealing himself.

So you might catch a sliver of it for a moment, and you can't grasp that, and then that is gone, and the next moment is there, and the next moment is there.

So God's beauty is not like a painting.

You could study a painting, and given a long period of time, you could learn everything there is to know about the painting.

God's not like that.

You cannot study him thoroughly because he's constantly shining.

It's constantly revealing.

I have a very silly analogy for this.

Back when I lived in Los Angeles, which is the radio capital of the world, there's a group called Matchbox 20.

You remember them?

And they released a song called It's 3 a.m.

Do you know the song?

Don't sing it right now.

And the the big radio station in LA, when that song released, the DJ locked himself in the radio room and only played that song for hours.

And he said, It's so good, I can only play that song.

And finally the owner of the station took the signal down to stop it.

And he was interviewed later and he said he was playing that song because every time he heard it, he heard something new and incredible in it, and it was the most beautiful song he'd ever heard.

He just wanted to keep playing it.

Okay.

How many times can you listen to that song before it just gets old?

Like three?

Four?

Do you understand?

God's beauty will never get old.

It's not something you can cycle through.

It's not the same song on repeat.

It's constant and infinite illumination where you're just you can only see sections of it or fragments of it or glances of it, and it keeps pouring out at maximum strength, maximum watts.

Then you can't take it all in.

That's what David wants.

He wants a glimpse of it, he wants to gaze on it.

That's all he cares about.

That's what motivates his life.

And this is why he is such a single-minded person.

He knows that this is the only thing worth living for.

Can he just see God's beauty?

He's captivated by this.

So this describes Psalm 27 is going to describe David's life.

And I'm going to give you an outline.

A life held captive by one thing.

That's David's life.

It's held captive by one thing.

What does that kind of life look like?

That's what David's praying for.

He's in exile.

Everyone's trying to kill him.

What does he pray for?

Well, he prays for one thing, that he would see the beauty of the Lord.

First, that life looks like a life of confidence.

Now I read to you all the verses that described confidence earlier, but it's all over the psalm.

Specifically, you can look down at verse 5.

He will hide me in his shelter.

This is a temporary kind of rescue that David's talking about.

The word shelter is the Hebrew word for what the Ark of the Covenant was held in when it was in the wilderness wanderings.

It was held in a tent, a little shelter.

David wanted to build a house for the ark to go into, and God told him no.

And so David says, okay, God will also hide me in his shelter in the day of trouble.

God can protect me.

He will conceal me, and here's the word again, under the cover of his tent.

God will bring me in and he will conceal me.

He will hide me even in this world.

I understand that God will protect me and answer my prayer here and now.

He doesn't know how God will answer his prayer.

David, of course, does ultimately die.

Part of this may be confidence in the Davidic covenant that God told him one of his descendants would reign on the throne.

So maybe that's the source of his confidence.

But regardless, David is saying, I know God will hear my prayer, he will rescue me, he will conceal me.

Verse 6, my head will be lifted up above my enemies all around me.

So he knows, and now I think he's going to ultimately, ultimately, I will have victory over all this.

Verse 10.

But you still have the Lord.

Yahweh will take me in.

His father and his mother, he had to send them out of Israel, remember, to protect them, he had to get them out of the country.

So they're in the country of one of Israel's enemies.

He can't go to them for help.

But the Lord, Yahweh, will always rescue him.

That is a life of confidence.

A life of confidence.

Things are reeling out of control.

David has confidence in the beauty of the Lord.

Last week we talked about the resurrection.

Last week I preached on the resurrection, and I made this point.

For the Christian, the worst case outcome of any situation is that you resurrect from the dead.

Remember?

And that should shape the way you think and the way you fear and the way you worry.

Like ultimately, worst case scenario, you resurrect.

This is that same point, but not from your perspective, but from God's perspective.

From your perspective, worst case scenario, you resurrect.

But to make that a more God-centered statement, the worst case scenario, the worst case outcome of any situation is that you will get a better view of God's glory.

Right now you see God's glory through a veil, you see it dimly.

In heaven, you'll see him face to face, personally.

And so David says, I know, I know that I'm going to see the Lord in his temple.

I know I'm going to see his glory.

Temple doesn't exist in the world yet, but I'm going to see it.

I'm going to see him.

That's all he wants.

And he has such confidence.

This confidence, remember, was forged through trials.

This confidence comes even through the trial of the temple.

So remember, when David became king, he didn't have Jerusalem.

The Ark of the Covenant spent 400 or 40 years wandering in the wilderness, then 400 years parked in the tent in Israel.

David becomes king, conquers Jerusalem, then wants to bring the ark into Jerusalem.

They bring the ark into Jerusalem.

They do it with like sobriety and pomp and circumstance and not following the instructions that are in Leviticus and in Exodus for how to move the ark.

They don't follow that.

Instead, they do like this, you know, who's who of Israelites, all the dignified people line up and they blow trumpets and they get to march the ark in.

And God strikes one of them dead.

And so David gives up.

Remember, he says, leave the ark there.

Nobody can approach Yahweh.

Forget about this.

He can stay in a tent for all I care.

I'm going home.

And that lasts for a while until David repents and goes after moving the ark a second time.

And do you remember the difference the second time?

The second time, it was festive.

There were sacrifices, a lot of sacrifices, but also a lot of dancing and a lot of singing and a lot of worship and a lot of rejoicing.

That's how they moved it.

And the Lord was pleased with that.

This is the ground of David's confidence.

No matter what happens, I'm going to delight in the Lord.

I'm going to delight in him.

I will conquer over my enemies.

I will worship.

That's what fuels this.

Yahweh receives worship.

He's a light, and I want to shine my light back to him.

That's the second point, by the way.

A life held captive by one thing is life of confidence.

It's a life of worship.

That's what David is doing here.

At the end of verse 5, he's going to lift me high in a rock.

And that again is going back to where David himself was stuck on the corner of a rock.

And then verse 6, my head's going to be lifted up, the enemies are around me, but I will offer in his tent sacrifices with shouts of joy.

I will sing and make melody to Yahweh.

David says, I am so confident because I know God's going to receive worship.

The world is falling apart, and what David wants to do is worship.

That could seem detached to his people.

What are you doing?

Worshiping.

It makes no sense to the world.

Everything's going wrong.

You have time to worship.

You remember when David's son died, his baby son?

When his son was sick, David was praying and fasting for the son's life.

Then his son died, and David said, he got up and worshiped.

And his men were like, that makes no sense.

And David said, Well, he's not going to resurrect.

Come to me.

I will go to him.

I've heard people say, oh, all David means by that is that I'm also going to die one day.

Oh yeah, that's going to motivate a father who just buried a child.

That's going to be real powerful motivation to worship right there.

Oh, I too will die.

Amen.

Let's go to lunch.

No, David's saying, my son died, and he's in the presence of the Lord, and I one day will also be in the presence of the Lord.

He can see the Lord face to face.

I get to see the Lord face to face one day.

I'm going to worship in light of that.

Remember what I said?

Worst case outcome?

David says, worst case outcome?

I will be worshiping with him.

That's what's motivating him.

I will offer his sacrifices to him.

You know, God is pure light, pure revelation, pure love.

What does that kind of person need?

How do you serve God?

God doesn't need you to serve him.

That's what the Bible says.

God isn't served.

The Lord of heaven and earth is not served by human hands as though he needed anything.

Sax 17.

Because he gives men, all men everywhere, life, breath, and all things.

How do you serve the person who's pure light?

You can't even act on God.

He only acts on you.

So what's the right response to this?

And worship here and the sacrifices David talks about, it's not that God needs sacrifices, it's that the life of worship is just a mirror.

You know, God is revealing all of his light back to you.

You can't do anything with it other than reflect it.

God is the person, he's the hardest person to give a gift to.

He has everything.

What do you give a person that has everything?

You just love him.

You just like him.

To use human terms, what do you give the person who has everything?

You just like him.

How can David respond to God who's just pure light?

Pure beauty.

You respond to pure beauty by just enjoying it.

And that's what David does.

I'm just gonna magnify this.

I'm gonna shine it back.

You see something pretty in this world, and you want to share it with people you love, right?

This morning I drove my middle daughter here like super early.

We saw the sunrise, and it was an incredibly beautiful sunrise.

And there were some clouds above us that were orange on one side and purple on the other, and there was a full moon above all them.

It was unbelievable.

What do you want to do when you see that?

You want to share it with somebody.

I want to take a picture of it and show it to my wife.

But have you ever tried to show like a sunrise on a phone?

It's like, oh, it's the most beautiful sunrise.

Check it out.

Doesn't quite do it justice.

What do you do with God and all of his beauty?

You just shine it.

You just rejoice in who he is.

That's all you can do.

He he shares the beauty here by singing, he says in verse 6, and making melody to Yahweh.

He's gonna make sacrifices.

That's how they moved the ark, remember?

When they finally moved the ark, they moved it with sacrifices, and it brought so much joy to them because the sacrifices, of course, point forward to Christ.

That brings him joy.

I'm gonna sing and I'm gonna make melody to Yahweh.

That's all I want to do, to have a life that overflows, that has tasted and seen the beauty of the of the Lord.

That's what David wants.

I just want to taste and see the beauty of the Lord, and that's gonna make me worship.

And sacrifices don't give back to God, they just rejoice in what God is giving to us, in his own beauty and his own glory.

Thirdly, a life that's held captive by one thing is a life of confidence, a life of worship.

And thirdly, it's a life of prayer.

The middle of the Psalm verse 7, it switches to persistent prayer.

In verse 4, David's talking about his prayer.

One thing I have asked of Yahweh, and he's but he's speaking of Yahweh in the third person, right?

I have asked of Yahweh.

I want to gaze upon the beauty of Yahweh, and in his temple, those are all third person pronouns here.

Verse 7, we switch to second person.

He's addressing God directly.

Hear, O Yahweh, when I cry aloud.

He's speaking to God.

God, hear me.

Be gracious and answer me.

So even though everything's falling apart in David's life, he's praying with confidence, but he's still praying.

He doesn't say, God is pure light and pure action, so I can't do anything except watch.

No, he says, I'm going to rejoice in who he is, and part of that being held captive by one thing is prayer.

David is sucked into a life of prayer here.

Oh Yahweh, hear me, be gracious, and answer me.

Because he doesn't feel like everything is gracious to him right now.

Remember, his sons are killing each other.

I mean, at this point, do you remember?

A rumor gets to David that all of his sons have died.

He hears a rumor that Absalom killed every one of them.

So he is praying.

It turned out just to be a rumor.

But that's what he heard.

Think of what's at stake.

If all of David's offspring dies, the Davidic covenant dies.

David responds with prayer.

God, listen to me.

Be gracious.

Answer me.

Again, there's this confident that he will, but he's still asking.

You have said, seek my face, verse 8.

My heart says to you, your face, Yahweh, I do seek.

That's in the English, in the ESV verse 8, it's so poetic, doesn't it?

You have said, seek my face.

My heart responds, I seek your face.

Can you make a song out of it?

In the Hebrew, it is not like that.

In the Hebrew, it almost reads, like David's interrupting the Lord.

You've said, and this switches to voice of addresser, you've said, seek my face.

It's the words of God.

God speaking.

God saying, Seek my face.

And it's almost like David interrupts it with, I am seeking your face, okay?

I am God.

You told me to do it, I'm doing it right now.

It reads so abruptly.

I am seeking it, God.

Believe me, I'm after your face.

He's in a cave.

God told him not to build the temple.

What's he supposed to do?

He only wants to get back to Jerusalem and go to the temple, which God told him he couldn't build.

That's all he wants right now.

He knows he'll see God face to face in the next life, but for now he just wants to see God.

So, and God's response is seek my face.

And David's like, I am seeking it.

What else?

Now, are those that see in David's tone here, like despair, like David has given up.

Even when he says, Don't abandon me, verse 9, don't hide your face from me.

Don't turn your servant away in anger.

But notice that David's praying.

Like if you really believed God didn't hear you, you wouldn't pray.

Right?

Here David is saying, Lord, I just want you to hear me so bad.

And he's saying it while praying.

This is a great picture of what it looks like to beat your feelings into subjection to what you know to be true.

David does not feel like God hears him.

David's life could be overcome with doubt, overcome with worry.

He doesn't feel like God hears him, but he knows God does.

And so this is a great biblical example of David whipping his emotions in the line here.

I don't feel like God listens to me, but heart, you better get in line because I know he does.

This is a life of prayer.

It's persistent.

He knows God will hear him.

Fourthly, life held captive by one thing is a life marked by confidence, by worship, by prayer.

Fourthly, it is a life marked by submission.

Verse 11.

Teach me your way, O Yahweh.

What he's this is the request right here.

He wants God to teach him, to show him what to do.

This is an appeal to the word of God.

God has revealed his beauty to us in his word.

Listen, when I talk about God being beautiful, there's a tendency in some of us, kind of more post-Enlightenment people, to view God's beauty as seen in nature.

And nature is beautiful, right?

I described the sunset or the sunrise earlier, and there's animals that are beautiful, and all there's the world is filled with beauty.

But the kind of natural beauty you see in the world, that's just the outline of God's beauty.

That's just like sketches.

That's black and white Polaroids with coffee spilled on them of God's beauty.

The word of God is the window into God's beauty.

It's not some kind of outline.

Nature is like the envelope that the greeting card is in.

Like some of them might have more colors than others, but at the end of the day, it's just the envelope.

If you give somebody a card in a nice envelope, they're like, did you like my card?

I didn't read it because the envelope's so nice.

Well, work through that issue and read the card.

Nature is beautiful.

It's the envelope.

The card, the window into God's glory, that is the word of God.

And that's what David's praying.

God, teach me what you want me to do.

What does your word say to somebody in my situation?

Family in turmoil, family in distress.

I'm in a foreign land.

What am I supposed to do?

Does your word have anything for me?

Show me that part.

Let me do that.

That's his prayer.

He wants to be in submission to God's word.

This is the heart of the person who wants to see the beauty of the Lord.

If you are seeking the Lord and you want to see the beauty of the Lord, you're going to bring your life under the Word of God.

He uses a very interesting word picture at the end of verse 11.

Lead me on a level path because of my enemies.

Remove all the obstacles from my path.

My enemies put obstacles there.

The enemies, that's something you would do.

A military retreats.

The army might put obstacles in the way so that they can't be pursued.

Or the victorious army might put obstacles in the way so that the defeated army can't return.

So David's looking at his life and he's like, the roads are littered with obstacles.

So God removed them.

How does God remove them?

He removes them through you submitting to his word.

Yesterday my family went hiking along the Anacostia River on the DC side of the river up in North DC there.

And our car was parked up in a parking lot up on a hill.

And there's a very lovely paved path that winds its way back and forth up the big hill to the parking lot.

So down from the river, you can walk all and we walked the paved path all the way down there.

But there's a section of the path that cuts off and it's it's made with rocks, and it's like more of a straight line.

And so on the way back, going uphill, we cut off the paved road and started going up the rocky path.

And that was, as you might imagine, a little bit harder than the paved path.

And at one point I sat down with one of my daughters in a big boulder there, and she said, Why is this way so rocky?

Well, it we took the rocky path.

I mean, that's what we were after.

We we looked at it from the pavement and we said, oh, that way is rockier, so let's go that way.

So now we can't act surprised when it's like, why is it rocky?

We chose this.

It didn't happen to us.

We did this.

This is the life of someone who's disobedient to God.

There's a smooth path laid out for you in the Word of God.

You're like, oh, that way is a shortcut.

That way will bring me happiness more directly.

Yes, the way to true happiness is maturity and all that.

I'm gonna do a shortcut.

I'm gonna go this way, and I'm gonna get what I want by that way, and then you sit down halfway along your life that way, and you're like, man, it is rocky over here.

What's going on?

Well, you chose that path.

You went down the rocky path.

The life that is fixated on one thing, on seeing the beauty of the Lord, will be the life that walks on the level path in submission to God and God's word.

And then finally, the life held captive by one thing is the life of waiting.

This is where the psalm ends.

David says in verse 12, don't give me over to my adversaries.

And then verse 13, I believe I will look upon the goodness of Yahweh in the land of the living.

So he's not even talking about the resurrection here.

He says, I think I am going to see.

This is a language of belief.

I believe I will see in the land of the living.

I'll be back in Jerusalem.

I will see the tent again.

I will get to see the Lord back in the land of the living.

I think it'll happen.

But when?

David doesn't know.

When will it happen?

And this is just, this is the way the Lord works.

You know, He He'll tell you what's good for you, but the timing of it belongs to him.

The Bible might say this is good, but when it arrives, that's up to him.

Up to him.

We received a Christmas card last week, which is after Christmas.

But it was postmarked like December 1st.

And it was from like somebody in Annadale or something.

Woodbridge, I think, actually.

December 1st.

That thing took a month to wind its way up I-95, which I understand.

This is the Lord's goodness to you sometimes.

Like it's postmarked, you know it's good, you know it's on its way, but when it arrives, you just don't know.

You don't know.

So verse 14, what are you supposed to do with that?

Wait for Yahweh.

Be strong, let your heart take courage, and wait for Yahweh.

What does waiting look like?

Well, it looks like you're gonna need strength for this, okay?

Because again, things are not good in the world when you're writing this kind of psalm, so you need to be strong.

You're tempted to capitulate, you're tempted to take the shortcut.

Nope, be strong.

You have to get your heart to take courage.

You tell your heart, heart, get in line.

You know God is true, you know he's good, so grab some courage, heart.

Don't be led by your heart in these situations.

Don't let your heart boss your mind around.

Don't let your heart tell you you don't know what God's gonna do.

You don't know when God's gonna show up, you don't know if God's really listening.

Silence, heart.

Take some courage, man up heart, and wait for Yahweh.

It's repeated twice in the last verse.

Wait for Yahweh, wait for Yahweh.

What does waiting look like?

It means having some patience, recognizing that this all makes sense in the light of eternity.

You'll get there eventually.

Now, David wanted more, one thing more than anything else.

He wanted to get back to the temple to pray to the Lord.

Do you know in the New Testament?

Maybe some of you thought of this verse while I was reading this.

This verse, Psalm 27, verse 4, has a surprise appearance in the New Testament.

Psalms 27:4

It's with Mary and Martha, Luke chapter 10.

Luke 10 · chapter mention

Jesus is teaching, and Mary is listening, and Martha is serving, and then Martha corners Jesus and says, It's not right that I'm doing all the serving, and Mary's doing all the listening.

Why don't you tell her to pick up a tray?

And Jesus tells Martha, do you remember?

Martha.

Oh Martha.

Only one thing.

You only need one thing.

There's only one thing important in this life, Martha.

Only one.

And he does not then finish the verse.

Go to the temple and gaze at the beauty of the Lord.

Jesus has already cleaned out the temple at this point.

And Mary's doing it.

Sit down and look at Jesus Christ.

This is the triune beauty of God, the eternal, infinite beauty of God that moves from the temple in David's lifetime to the face of Jesus Christ.

God, this is our greatest desire to see your beauty in the person of Christ.

We know one day we will see your beauty face to face.

The veil will be removed.

One day we will look upon you.

But in the meantime, we have your word, we have the gospels, we have Jesus incarnate.

The beauty of the glory dwells in him.

And so as we seek your face, Lord, we don't have an abstract face.

David wanted to sit down at the Ark of the Covenant.

We don't even look for an ark anymore, God.

You are the temple.

You are the beauty of the Lord.

We seek your face.

It's in Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.

And now for a parting word for Pastor Jesse Johnson.

Thanks for joining us.

If you're in the Washington, D.C.

area, I would love to see you at Emmanuel Bible Church.

For more information on our church or our current service times, go to IBC.church.

For more information about the Master Seminary and their Washington, D.C.

location, go to TMS.edu.

I hope this resource has been a blessing to you and it helps you seek the Lord daily, serve others around you, and share the gospel with boldness.