Very Present Help in Trouble: God is Our Salvation (Psalm 27)

Hello, I'm Pastor Creighton, and thank you for tuning in to Newsung Churches Podcast.

We're a gospel centered church in Port Perry, Ontario, proclaiming the true and life-giving word of Jesus as we love and serve our neighbors.

May God bless you today through his life-giving word.

Let us read Psalm 27 responsively, if you would please respond with the bolded text.

To behold the fair beauty of the Lord.

And to see him in his tabernacle.

For in the time of trouble he shall hide me in his tabernacle.

Indeed, in the secret place of his dwelling, he shall hide me and set me high upon the cross.

And now he shall lift up my head.

Therefore I will offer in his dwelling an oblation with great gladness.

Hearken to my voice, O Lord, when I cry unto you.

You speak to my heart and say, Seek my face.

O hide not your face from me.

You have been my helper.

When my father and my mother forsake me, teach me your way, O Lord.

For there are false witnesses who have risen up against me and those who speak wrong.

Deliver me not over to the will of my adversaries.

I would utterly have fainted.

Oh, wait for the Lord.

Be strong, and he shall comfort your heart.

The Lord is my light and my salvation.

Of whom then shall I fear?

The Lord is the strength of my life.

Of whom then shall I be afraid?

Let's pray.

Lord God, loving Heavenly Father, we come before you today, always needful of your help, always needful of your strength, always needful of you to be our refuge.

And we pray, Lord, that by grace you would do that necessary surgery to cut out from us all of those false gods, idols, sources of trust, that we turn to you, apart from you, to try and find our security.

Father, we pray you would direct us to where true security can be found, where confidence and comfort abound.

And we pray, Lord, that we would discover it in your word today as you speak your word to us.

In Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.

Please be seated.

Well, I like to uh keep up with Christian thinkers and podcasts and blogs and the sort of things.

You know, just knowing where the conversation is at.

And there's lots of conversation you can imagine online about the world.

Here's one uh Christian thinker I was reading this week, reflecting on world events.

This thinker writes, I am choked up, and my sobs interrupt all my words.

The bright light, the brightest light, pardon me, of all the world is being extinguished, and if this can happen, what can be safe?

Does anyone feel like that when they watch the news?

Does anyone feel like that when they scroll through the headlines?

Here's a Christian expressing what might be fair to say is despair.

Despair when he looks at the world today.

Now I say I was reading it online this week, that's true, but the words weren't written this past week.

They were actually written over 1,500 years ago.

And they come from a fellow named Jerome, who is a famous translator of the Bible.

He translated the Latin Vulgate.

And Jerome is reflecting on the fall of the Roman Empire.

My voice is choked.

My sobs interrupt my words.

The brightest light of all the world is being extinguished.

If this can happen to Rome, what can be safe?

His world is topsy-turvy.

His world is unpredictable.

Who knows what the outcome is going to look like?

He only knows that his world is a lot less secure today than it was yesterday.

And so Jerome despairs.

Saints can be like that too sometimes, right?

When we look at the world today, do we feel like Jerome?

I think sometimes I do.

And that option's always open to us, isn't it?

We can read the headlines and we can despair.

That Jerome option is always available, and sometimes it is very tempting.

Because there is lots of reason to plug into a fear, a fear of what's going to happen, a fear of things flying out of control.

This sermon series we've dove into last week of very present help and trouble is meant to help us reflect on those biblical truths that can help inoculate us against godless fear.

In anxious times that we live in, can we find comfort and confidence?

And the Psalms say yes.

The Psalms are like the original prayer book of God's people.

It's like a blend of worship lyrics and prayers and complaints and thanksgivings and all of these things that express all of the totality of human experience before God, and they invite us to pray into them.

If you've ever wondered, by the way, we, you know, we'll go through a psalm together every Sunday, but unlike our other two readings, or unlike the gospel reading, there's no sort of the word of the Lord, thanks be to God.

Have you noticed that?

That is not to suggest that the Psalms are any less God's word than our other readings.

But it is meant to be reflective of a particular way we are trying to engage with the Psalms.

We're trying to engage with them like they're the prayers that they're meant to be.

And so they're helping us to reflect on the biblical truths that we are encountering in the other readings and present to us biblical truths that we can pray into.

That's the posture, at least, when we encounter the psalms.

And what we've done in the last couple of weeks, or pardon me, starting last week and in the next couple of weeks, we're going to be looking at a given psalm that we've selected in a week to help us find comfort and confidence and anxious times.

And the psalm we're going to engage with today is Psalm 27.

If you've got your order of service, you can open it up.

If you've got your Bibles, open it up there as well.

Psalm 27 is a prayer of both lament for the troubling circumstances that David, the author of King David, is experiencing, but it is also an expression of confidence in the Lord in the midst of his trouble.

What Psalm 27 wants to say to us today is that our confidence in times of anxiety can only be found in trusting in God.

Trusting in God is how we find confidence in the midst of troubling times.

The Jerome option is available to David in his troubling times, but it's not the option that David selects.

Instead, David writes, The Lord is my light and my salvation.

Whom then shall I fear?

The Lord is the strength of my life, of whom shall I be afraid?

Other translations put it this way: God is my light, my salvation, my stronghold.

God is the source of all that is good, all that is beautiful, all that is true.

He is our light.

We put out the paschal candle to remind us that this season of Easter reminds us that the risen Lord Jesus is the light of our salvation.

That's what David is getting at here.

The source of light, salvation, strength is found in God in the midst of trouble.

So trusting God is how we find our confidence.

Trusting God to be the light, salvation, and stronghold that we can't be for ourselves.

So here's the question I want us to ask.

What does it look like to trust God?

What does it look like to trust God in the midst of anxious times?

If we're going to find our confidence, we have to trust Him.

How do we do that?

And I think David understands there's at least three things involved in trusting God.

Trusting God looks like dwelling with God.

Trusting with God looks like seeking after God.

And trusting God looks like waiting for God.

Dwell, seek, wait.

That's what it looks like to trust God.

So I'm hoping that as we explore this psalm together, we arrive in that place where we haven't.

I would be very surprised if we walked out of this room today and felt no anxiety whatsoever.

Or we turn on the news later this afternoon or tomorrow and didn't feel that anxiety come.

But I hope that as that feeling comes, we are reminded of that Psalm 27 truth, that we have a very present help in trouble, that we are not left to our own devices, but we can trust Him to do what we can't do for ourselves.

So let's understand what it means to trust God through Psalm 27.

Let's open up our scriptures.

I'm going to be using the ESV translation for today.

The translation we have in the bullet and the translation that we use generally Sunday for Sunday is a purpose-built translation for corporate engagement or praying through the psalm together.

It's meant to give us sort of a rhythm there, and sometimes the words get reordered and things like that, just so that it gives us that rhythm that lends itself to corporate reading of the Psalms.

I'm going to read ESV, which I think is a reliable enough translation, and you can compare with how it looks with the Psalm as it is in the bulletin and get a fuller sense, I think, of the meaning here.

So, what does trusting God look like in trouble?

Trusting God begins with dwelling with God.

Let's look at verse 4.

Pardon me.

Verse 2 and 3, David's very clear, he's got enemies at the gate.

There are evildoers who assail him, ready to eat up his flesh, adversaries and foes, an army is encamped against me.

And we know that David, David's life, has not been altogether easy.

It's not been a cakewalk, so to speak.

He's been persecuted by enemies like Saul.

He's been hounded by enemy nations.

David knows what it's like to live in troubling times.

And in the midst of those troubling times, David exercises trust in God.

What does that look like?

Verse 4.

One thing have I 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.

So where does trusting God in troubling times begin?

It begins with this singular request that David has of God.

And his request is this that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life.

What does David mean by the house of the Lord?

His vocabulary gives us some clues.

He uses house and temple, he uses tent, he's describing, uh he's describing the tabernacle where God's presence is made known in the midst of God's people.

This place where God's people go to worship him in Jerusalem, and this place that reminds God's people that he will neither leave them nor forsake them.

David longs to dwell with God, where God makes himself known, and to enjoy God's covenant presence with his people.

And why does God long or pardon me, David long to do that?

Why does he long to dwell in the house of the Lord?

Verse 5.

Well, it's because 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 the rock.

Why does David want to dwell with God?

That's his singular request.

It's because David understands God will shelter me from the trouble that I am experiencing.

God will do for me what I am powerless to do for myself.

He will be my refuge.

Therefore I long to dwell with him where he makes himself known.

And David knows that as he dwells with God, as he goes to engage with God in his temple, he expects that there will be a triumphant outcome.

And now, verse 6, my head shall be lifted up above my enemies all around me, and I will offer in his tent sacrifices with shouts of joy.

I will sing and make melody to the Lord.

So David expects that as he dwells with God, as God shelters David in the midst of his troubles, the outcome will be thanksgiving and praise for God's amazing acts of deliverance and salvation.

David will give God praise and glory for how he shows up in David's life to rescue him in the midst of anxious times.

But I want us to notice this.

David does not long to enter the house of the Lord after he's addressed his problems, but before.

Did you notice that?

One thing, verse four, that I would seek after, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life.

Verse 5, for he will hide me in his shelter on the day of trouble.

That's future tense.

I expect that God will deliver me in the future, and when he delivers me, then I will sing and make melody to the Lord.

David's worship, in other words, is not conditional on God's salvation.

It is anticipating God's salvation.

David begins with a posture of praise and thanksgiving and ongoing trust in God.

So this raises the question: is our worship of God conditional or unconditional?

I can think of a couple conversations I've had in a couple parishes with newcomers who join us.

And I'll ask, you know, where are you from?

What's your story?

What brings you to church today?

And a couple of times I've heard, well, I had a really successful business deal closed this week, so I figured it'd be a good thing to show up to church and say thanks to God for that.

And I go, that's great.

We should give God thanks for that.

Hallelujah.

And then you never see him again.

Or at least that's happened to me a couple of times.

My heart kind of goes out to these folks.

Not because they, you know, not because giving God thanks for something that has worked out really well for our benefit is a bad thing.

That's a very good thing.

But often our relationship with God can be very transactional, can't it?

If we're not careful, and we'll say, well, I'll worship God, I'll give him thanks and praise on these conditions.

And unless God meets those conditions, you can't expect me to see me at church, so to speak.

David says, you can expect me to see where God makes himself known, before and after God delivers on his salvation.

David understands that he is entering into something that is far greater than just himself or his troubles.

And I think Revelation 5, which is our New Testament reading today, just gives us a glimpse of what that looks like.

This heavenly worship, that's what John is seeing in his vision.

He's seeing heavenly worship take place in the very throne room of God, where all these myriads of thousands and thousands are saying with a loud voice, Worthy is the Lamb who is slain.

I wonder who the Lamb is, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing.

Heavenly worship is taking place.

David understands when I go to where God makes Himself known, I'm participating in this thing that is far greater than just my life story.

It is God's work of salvation through all of time and in all of creation.

And in the midst of my trouble, David might say, I need to be reminded that God is up to great things.

God is up to cosmic things.

And I need to be in his temple, to be reminded of his purposes and his commitment to rescue not just me, but his entire world.

See, I think worship trains you and I to depend on God in a very special way.

Our worship ought not to be conditional on what we understand to be God's deliverance.

Our worship both responds in praise and thanksgiving when we experience God's salvation, but it also anticipates that day when our salvation will be full and complete and final, which means there is never a time in life where we ought not to show up and worship.

Where we go where God makes Himself known, and in His Word and through His gifts of grace, we should gather where God trains us to participate in that story which is far greater than us, that heavenly cosmic act of salvation that we know.

I think liturgy is really helpful for that.

I mean, if we've talked liturgy, you know how much of a geek I am when I talk about liturgy.

I get that it is not everybody's thing.

And I am not saying that liturgical worship is the right way to worship, but I do think one of the benefits of being a church that worships in a liturgical way is it trains us like going to the gym and doing our reps.

It trains us in the gospel, it trains us to respond in praise and thanksgiving and in confession and in assurance, and it trains us to depend on God's good gifts for us.

And it sends us out into the world to be agents of love and service to our neighbors.

Liturgy is helpful in training us with that gospel mindset to enter into that story which is far greater than us.

There's lots of ways to do that.

Ours is just one way, and I think a beautiful way to do that.

If we want to trust in God, we need to dwell with God.

We need to go to where God makes Himself known before and after we experience God's work of deliverance and salvation.

That's the first thing David understands.

I trust God when I dwell with God.

David also understands, I trust God when I seek after God.

So verses seven, I'm going to read seven to ten here.

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

This is a request.

You have said, seek my face.

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

So 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 have forsaken me, but the Lord will take me in.

David understands that seeking after God begins with a dependence on God's faithfulness.

Seeking after God begins with God's character, not my own pull up my bootstraps, I'm really going to make it happen this time.

Our initiative, so to speak, it begins with recognizing that God in every circumstance remains steadfast.

Everything else can fail us, but God will not fail us.

And that's what we see in verse 10.

Verse 10, David's using some hyperbolic language.

I don't think it's the case that David's father and mother have literally forsaken him and said, Don't call us son, we're sick of you.

What David's saying is, the whole world could turn its back on me.

And the very last people I would expect to reject me, my mom and my dad, they could reject me before you would reject me, Lord.

Which is to say, you're not going to reject me, Lord.

I can depend on that.

Seeking the Lord recognizes the Lord is always faithful to us.

He is the one thing that will never fail us.

And therefore, when we come to the Lord in dependence, it's not wishful thinking.

Boy, I really.

Hope this works out this time.

It is a reasonable confidence that God has our good in mind.

No matter how difficult our circumstances may be, we can depend on God's faithfulness.

And secondly, we can, pardon me, we can depend on God's faithfulness.

We need to submit to God's leadership, even in the difficult circumstances of life.

Verse 11 Teach me your way, O Lord, 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.

They breathe out violence.

With every breath, it's nothing but violence, oppression, trouble.

In the midst of life's anxieties, trouble, confrontations, David understands you, God, need to do the leading, you, God, need to do the teaching, and I need to do the learning, and I need to do the following.

Again, we can make our relationship with God quite transactional sometimes, eh?

We can say, God, I'll depend on your faithfulness so long as you meet my demands.

So long as I'm doing the leading, so long as I'm doing the teaching, so to speak, and you know, you do your thing.

If we're going to seek after God, we need to submit ourselves completely to God's purposes at work in our life.

Submit ourselves completely to his leadership, to his teaching, and learn to learn and follow.

This is that singleness of heart that David is getting at.

One thing I would ask that I would seek is God.

Do we desire God above everything else?

Above everything that life has to offer.

See, I gotta confess, sometimes I find God is more my assumed means rather than my desired end.

Do you know what I mean?

I might say something like, God, please let that.

Let's say this.

God, let me win the lottery this month.

You know, why not?

I could use a couple mil.

When he doesn't, I say, God, what are you doing?

I had a good plan.

Why didn't you meet it?

I mean, maybe that's a silly example.

It kind of is, but you catch my meaning.

We can do this in ways big and small, can't we?

And rather than, God, more than anything else, I desire you and depend on your faithfulness and submit to your leadership, you, God, are really just my means to secure what I really want.

Finances, success, notoriety, security.

You, God, need to provide that for me.

And so long as you're providing that for me, I'll seek after you.

But if I get the sense that you're really getting in the way of the thing I really want, then we're going to find a way to circumvent that.

Does that make sense?

I'm thinking about a well-known celebrity and rapper who had a very public conversion to Christianity a few years ago.

And I remember that.

I mean, I'm not particularly up on celebrity culture.

Rachel helps keep me relevant in that way.

But I was pastoring in Ottawa at the time, and I was leading a young adults group who, you know, knew this guy very, very well.

And, you know, it was a big deal.

He was going on late night shows and talking about his newfound faith in Jesus and how fulfilled he was made to feel and all of these things.

And that's, praise God for that.

That is amazing when we see conversion like that.

And I remember the consensus we came to with the young adults group that I was leading was boy, we hope someone's discipling him.

We hope someone comes alongside him and helps him in, you know, when things get tough, because you can have a certain zeal and enthusiasm when you first convert, but life gets hard.

So what do you do when life gets hard?

And sure enough, over, I don't know, five, six, seven years, something like that, this individual has very publicly abandoned his faith, saying Jesus did not give him the prayers that he asked for, never came through for them.

And so what do I have to do with them?

And that breaks my heart.

It breaks my heart, but I have to recognize there's part of me that, there's part of me that sees myself in that.

I want what Jesus can do for me, not necessarily Jesus.

It's his grace and his work in my heart that helps to teach me the difference.

That Jesus is the only one who cannot fail me.

And therefore, I desire him above all the material or secondary blessings he can provide for me.

David understands God will not fail him.

He alone is faithful.

Therefore, I seek him above all else.

I depend on his faithfulness, I submit to his leadership, because unlike anything else in life, material blessings or otherwise, God cannot fail.

So my heart is set on him.

We seek God when we depend on him, when we submit to his leadership.

And in a world where politics and economy and success, all of these things seem to be just completely exploded lately, we need to be reminded that the only thing that will not fail us is God's commitment to his promises.

Let me touch on this quickly.

Verse 13 and 14.

David says, I believe that I shall look upon the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.

Waiting for God is hopeful.

He will see the goodness of the Lord.

Waiting for God is hopeful, waiting for God is courageous.

Wait for the Lord.

Be strong, let your heart take courage, wait for the Lord.

Waiting for God is not weakness.

It is not resigning ourselves to passivity.

It is recognizing that He alone is faithful, He alone will lead us, He alone will provide for us, and therefore I'm willing to stay put for as long as it takes for God to do what only God can do in my life and in His worlds.

Waiting for God is hopeful and courageous, and that should make Christians hopeful and courageous people.

Most recently I went through this psalm through someone I was meeting with who received a difficult diagnosis and gave me a call.

And Psalm 27 was what came to mind, and we prayed through it together.

And I was so heartened by this person's confidence and God's ability to do the work.

Whether that was a work of healing or whether that was a call to come home.

This person recognized that God is her light and salvation, her stronghold.

And therefore, she was willing to wait for the Lord to be strong, to let her heart take courage.

See, Psalm 27 can make that difference in our lives if we let it.

It can remind us that no matter what circumstances we find ourselves in, we can wait for God to do what only God can do, and that is not weakness, that is not resignation, that is depending on God to be God.

So we have faith, we have the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.

We always have the Jerome option available to us to respond to the world, don't we?

We can always toss up our hands and collapse into anxiety or despair.

And sometimes it is quite tempting.

But Psalm 27 reminds us that there is another response to be had.

There is a David response.

And even when the world feels like it's falling apart, it's not just despair that we can respond with, it is confidence in God.

Another person who understood this, a contemporary of Jerome's, was Augustine.

Augustine was in North Africa while the Rome was falling.

And he writes this: he writes, God did not raise up citadels of stone and marble for us outside of this world.

He raises up citadels of the Holy Spirit for us, citadels of love which will never collapse, which will forever stand in glory when this world has been reduced to ashes.

Rome has collapsed, and your hearts are outraged by this.

Rome was built by men like yourself.

Since when did you believe that men had the power to build things that are eternal?

Your souls, filled with the light of the Holy Spirit, will not perish.

What's Augustine saying?

When the world around us overwhelms us, when we are filled with the anxiety and worry of a world that seems topsy-turvy, we remember that God is doing a work which will endure.

And so it's not that we bury our head in the sand or bury it in the clouds.

We are always mindful that God will be faithful to his promises.

And it's in him that we trust as we dwell with him, as we seek him, and as we wait for him.

We come to Christ and we recognize that he is the temple.

Jesus says, destroy this temple, pointing to this structure that folks associated with what David was talking about, and I will rebuild it in three days.

And the narrator says, He wasn't talking about the physical temple, he was talking about his body.

When we go to Christ, we go to where God makes himself known to us.

We dwell with him by faith.

We seek after Christ when we take up his invitation to come to him, all who labor and are heavy laden, and he will give us rest.

Take his yoke upon you and learn of him, for his yoke is is his burden is easy, his yoke is light.

Jesus desires us to depend on him and to learn from him and to wait for him.

I love that part of our communion liturgy in Easter where we say, Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again.

We wait with hope and courage for Christ to do for us that saving work.

So we come to the Lord's table with confidence.

God in Christ is our light and our salvation.

We shall not fear.

Amen.

We hope that you've been blessed by God's Word today.

If you live in the Port Perry area, we hope that you'll come and worship with us in person on Sunday at 10 a.m.

If you'd like to learn more about Newsong Church, we'd love to connect with you.

Please find our contact information at newsongportperry.ca and reach out to us.

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If you feel called to support our ministry with a financial gift, please go to newsongportperry.ca slash giving to make your contribution.

Go in peace to love and serve the Lord.