This sermon is from the Rev. Charles G. Dennison sermon archive, part of the “Psalms” series, and was preached at Grace Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Sewickley, PA, during a worship service on Sunday, September 6, 1987.

The Lord is my life and my salvation. Whom shall I fear? The Lord is the defense of my life. Whom shall I dread? When evildoers came upon me to devour my flesh, my adversaries and my enemies, they stumbled and fell. Though a host encamp against me, my heart will not fear. the Lord arise against me. In spite of this, I shall be confident.

One thing have I asked from the Lord. That I shall seek after, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord and to meditate in his temple. For in the day of trouble he will conceal me in his tabernacle, In the secret place of his tent, he will hide me. He will lift me up on a rock, and now my head will be lifted up above my enemies around me, and I will offer in his tent sacrifices with shouts of joy. I will sing, yes, I will sing praises to my Lord.

Hear, O Lord, when I cry with my voice, and be gracious to me and answer me. Take my face, my heart said to thee, thy face, O Lord, I shall seek. Do not hide thy face from me. Do not turn thy servant away in anger, for thou hast been my help. Do not abandon me, nor forsake me, O God of my salvation, for my father and my mother have forsaken me, but the Lord will take me up.” Teach me thy way, O Lord, and lead me in a level path. Because of my foes, do not deliver me over to the desire of my adversaries, for false witnesses have risen against me, and such as breathe out violence. I would have despaired unless I had believed that I would see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait for the Lord. Be strong and let your heart take courage. Yes, wait for the Lord. Pray with me briefly.

Beneath your eye, our God, your people assemble, and surely you constitute them in keeping with your rules. and the pattern of those things that exist above in heaven. And as it is there, O Lord, that the four living creatures appear before your throne, so even here, in like manner, as if facing the four corners of the earth, as if the speaking of the totality of creation, your servants speak forth your word, and it covers the earth. but also our father above, there are the twenty-four elders. And so it is that there we have that symbol, that emblem of rule. Surely, rule which you have granted, authority which you have conferred, no less among your people here. So our God, we pray for your people and the rule manifest among them. that truly your rule would be manifest, that rule that is evident above, also plain and obvious here. Bless your church with grand, magnificent rulers. Lord, bless your church and this church, we pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.

We have been working at the psalm now for two previous weeks, and what we have focused on, as we have looked at it, is the fact that we might well call it the backward psalm. By this time, you have a good idea about what I mean when I say that Psalm 27 is the backward song. For the ordinary structure of songs, those that we are familiar with, move in their composition from complaints or cry for help to a confident affirmation, a confident confession of God as that one in whom there is found adequacy. sufficiency, strength, salvation. But here, very strangely, quite oddly, we have a psalm that seems to be built upside down. For rather than beginning with the complaint or the cry for help, the psalmist here starts out with a confident confession, a ring affirmation of trust in God. But then, as you note in verse 7, he moves from the tone of that confident confession into a cry for help. He cries out to the Lord on the backdrop of this confidence, this confident affirmation.

Now, about the opening six verses. In recognizing them as a confident confession and affirmation. We have also understood them as being quite comprehensive as well as profound. We have noted the images And I expect that you could tell me what those dominant images are as we look at these opening six verses. You don’t have to wander too far into the psalm to find them.

They are in the first verse. The double image, or the twin images, the dual images, are those of the dawn, spoken of here in the first line as the light the Lord is my light, or the Lord is my dawn, as if in him the sun rises. Well, this image of the dawn is then coupled with the image of what is spoken of in the third line, you are looking at a New American standard, what is spoken of as the defense, or the refuge, the fortress. These images prevail through the first six verses, as we have said. But we note, as we move from the first three verses to the second three verses, that is, from verses one through three to verses four through six, that there is a shift a change, and the images themselves are affected.

Now it is this subtle shift, as you move from those verses, it is this subtle shift that forces upon us consideration of the comprehensiveness of precisely what the psalmist wishes to communicate. The scope of it, just how inclusive his comments are, and how they envelop in a sense the totality of any believer’s life. If you wish to chart out your life from the standpoint of faith, and faith’s ringing affirmation There is no place better to turn, it seems, than the opening six verses of this twenty-seven song, and that may well account for the popularity of the song, and why this song has meant so much to so many who have found themselves in severe distress. They may well find themselves simply repeating over and over again that opening line, The Lord is my life and my salvation, whom shall I fear? Well, we move from the first three verses to the second three and catch hold of something of the comprehensiveness of what is spoken by the farmers. We can speak of that comprehensiveness in this way, as we know what is particular or peculiar to those opening three verses. As you read through those first three verses, you are impressed with this fact.

The life of which the psalmist speaks, the refuge of which he speaks, these two things, these two images, are actually present realities in his life experience. They are present realities in his life experience. so that in his circumstance, right now, right now, not tomorrow, not next year, not when he dies, not when he goes to glory, right now he is experiencing the light and the refuge which God is. He is blessed and he is sheltered. he is blessed and he is protected. This in spite of the fact that the psalmist is enveloped in the darkness, and literally, as far as the world is concerned, defenseless. In fact, it is precisely in those circumstances of the darkness and defenselessness that the speak as he does. The Lord is my God, and the Lord is my refuge.

Now you can see just how instructive that is to you. For it’s not after the darkness passes. It’s not after you have received help, but precisely in the deepest moments of the darkness, precisely in those moments when you are utterly helpless, that faith is tried and faith is confirmed. Faith is tested. How will you respond?

The Lord is my God. The Lord is my fortress. The psalmist, then, matching the image of the dawn and the fortress, bringing them together wonderfully. The psalmist is like a single night watchman. The psalmist is like of one man army who, despite his solitariness, is bathed in light and secure within an impregnable fortress. Such is his confident affirmation. because of who the Lord is.

Well, that’s verses 1 through 3. We have then the movement to verses 4 through 6. But here you see the shift takes place. Formally, the light and refuge were present reality. Here, in verses four through six, the light and the refuge become future realities. Those things for which the psalmist must wait. Note how he speaks of it in the opening of verse four. He says, one thing I have asked from the Lord, that will I seek at the power of that language seems not able to be comprehended or exhausted by English when compared with the Hebrew, for laid within that language, you see, is all of the meaning and significance of that watchman of whom we were speaking, that watchman waiting for the dawn. or even better, the language is overlaid with the imagery of the temple, as if the priest can’t wait for the dawn so he can get down to the temple and serve God there.

We’ve moved then from an affirmation that focuses upon present realities to an affirmation that is now schooled by the fact that these realities are as well future. For while it is true that God is our light and our refuge now, he shall prove himself to be such in the great day when he brings everything to conclusion. The light in that day will be so wonderful. To stand in it will mean life. Eternal life. And the dispelling of darkness forever. But for that, you see, the psalmist must wait. He must wait for that.

He seeks then the morning light like that watchman. He seeks that light like the devout priest of God desirous upon the rising of the sun to appear in the temple of the Lord in order to offer the morning sacrifice. He desires the sanctuary of God as a soldier might, the security of his quarters when the night is over. But he waits with the certainty that the dawn will come. He waits with the certainty that the dawn will come, and that a better security than even that which he experiences now will be revealed to him.

Now you see, these images are placed side by side. What arises for us out of the first three verses, and then what arises out of the second. In order that the life of the believer, your life, the life of the believer and his confidence, your confidence, might be made plain and clear. On the one hand, I am serene in the midst of many terrors, as the Lord has come, has come, past tense, has come to me.

As my light and as my salvation. I am blessed with his presence, and as such, how can I be otherwise than confident? Full of faith. Full of faith. On the other hand, I yearn for his presence and that condition of things when all the night watches will be done, when all waiting will end. This is the not yet. What I do not yet have. Yet while I wait, I am nonetheless confident. For my weight is in the power is in the power of that one who has already come as my light and my salvation. I wait by virtue and in the strength of that one who has already revealed himself, that one who has already made himself my Lord.

Now, the profundity of it all is at hand, is within our reach, for it’s not just the comprehensiveness of these opening verses that stuns us, overwhelms us, that our whole life and the expression of our faith is surveyed right here. There is a profundity that arises out of this description granted us here by the psalmist. It is a profundity that exceeds those insights, which concentrate upon the fact that it is precisely in the darkness that we confess the Lord is light. And precisely while we wait, we confess the Lord to be our goal, that which we long after.

The profundity here begins to be expository. when we realize that what is described in verses one through three deliberately precedes that which is described in verses four through six, so that it is not apart from what you already have that you wait for what is yet to be yours. to be perfectly plain and clear, you can’t wait obediently unless you wait in the realities of those things of which the psalmist speaks. Unless the Lord is your life and your salvation, unless you are able to confess that, you can’t wait obediently. And you cannot expect to stand. You will not stand, you will fall. The power is overwhelming.

For just at the point when you are considering these things, you recall that the Lord comes not because of any merit in you, nor because of any righteousness that you can place before him, by which you can make claim upon him. The Lord comes as a gift. as his own free act, whereby he extends himself to those he loves. True faith does not turn its back on the gift. True faith begins with grace. That’s where it starts. the Lord is my light and my salvation by grace by grace so with and by grace in and through faith I wait a better day when all the nights will end and all the waiting will be over and there will be a perpetual dawn and a sanctuary above not made with hands a security and a secure dwelling forever Does it matter what comes then, as you read down through the rest of the song?

Does it matter that my mother and my father have forsaken me? It’s an unpleasant thing, to be sure. And a tragedy. But can I hold up? Can I survive? Why, it’s precisely when my father and my mother forsake me that the Lord takes me up. I can’t help think, when I read that verse of that story, the one I love the most, in John 9, the story of the man born blind, and when he’s called into court by the Sanhedrin and he’s questioned by them, Concerning this one who is healed him and then his parents are called in and they virtually disown him because they’re afraid of the Jewish authorities. On the heels of that, the man is left there, solitary, no friend, Jesus meets him. And asks him if he believes on the Son of God. And he says, who is this one that I might believe on him? And Jesus says, I, the one who is speaking to you, am he.

And then there follows the 10th chapter about the good shepherd and the sheepfold. cast out of the fold of your family, only to be taken up in the fold of God, shepherded by Jesus. What about false witnesses? Those who plot violence? to devise cruel plots to destroy me.

Why in the midst of it I am confident? Because the Lord has come. He has presented himself as gift, light and fortress. My faith in him sustains me while I wait for his inevitable return. Well, need I go on and expound the profundity to you even further? I think that you can grasp it. For you realize how this psalm speaks about Jesus himself.

For if there was ever anyone who was perfectly confident, who believed perfectly, it was he. So the psalm can be read as one, as if descriptive of Jesus, subjectively in his own faith, as he expresses But of course, the twist is that that one who is expressing faith is also the object of faith.

For who comes as the gift but Christ? Who is the light of the world but Jesus? Who is the rock? the fortress, the sanctuary of God, of Jesus Christ. And who is the one for whom we long, and for whom we wait? Is it not the Lord Jesus? And is not our faith this?

He will come. He will come. And He’ll put everything right. and everything will be light and joy forever. Let us know then, Lord, the comprehensiveness of the psalmist’s expression of faith, its depth and profundity, and let us be overwhelmed with its magnificence.

O Lord, in the midst of darkness and in the fight, you are our dawn. You are our rock. Nevertheless, we also wait. We wait for the shining of the light that will end all things. And until that day comes, we wait patiently, confidently, in the certainty that it shall come. and when it does, oh what a glory. We pray our God that we believing may please you. Surely we are called to wait on you and for you, for there is help nowhere else. and no one else can supply us our need. Amen.

The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.