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, August 23, 1987.

Tonight we are reading Psalm 27. The Lord is my light 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 imposed in camp against me, my heart will not fear. Though war rise against me, in spite of this, I shall be confident.

One thing have I asked from the Lord, that I shall seek, 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 upon a rock, and now my head will be lifted up above my enemies round about me, and I will offer in his tent sacrifices with shouts of joy. I will sing, yes, I will sing praises to the Lord. Hear, O Lord, when I cry with my voice, and be gracious to me and answer me. When Thou didst say, Seek 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. 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 mine adversaries, for false witnesses have risen up 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. Let’s pray briefly.

According to your ordinance, according to your ordination, O God, you have set your purpose, your plan before your people. And you have established your house, not without respect to the ordering of that house. So it is, Lord, that you have given to your household, to your church, offices for its well-being and structure. Lord, you have blessed your people with those fit for rule, and you have raised up from the midst of your own those who would serve those who would serve in the office of rule. And so it is throughout your church today, in every place where you are called upon in truth.

We do ask you for the strength of your assemblies. And Father, we beseech you that there might be that wonderful rule of our God expressed in the rule of those whom you’ve raised up. We ask you for the elders of the church, and we ask you for the elders of this church. We praise you for them. We ask, Father, that we ourselves may be found submissive before you and before them. We pray that your ordering for your people might be well respected by your people and seen as that which is for their well-being.

Encourage us, Father, and encourage those of our number who rule with your gracious spirit. We pray this in Jesus’ name, amen. Tonight we begin our look at Psalm 27. We want to consider three things. First of all, Psalm 27, the familiar psalm. Then Psalm 27, the backward psalm. And then Psalm 27, the beautifully constructed psalm. Psalm 27, the familiar song.

Well, not in my experience, at least not until I began my ministry. I knew some of the lines. I had heard them. And yes, when I was younger, I had even recited some of them, not really knowing where they came from. I think of the opening line, The Lord is my light and my salvation. I had certainly heard that line before, and I had said it.

I think of verse four, One thing have I asked of the Lord, that I will seek, 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 or inquire in his temple. And I would say that I knew that verse not because I was familiar with the psalm in any respect, but because I had heard that verse read out over a congregation as a call to worship as I was growing up in the church. And then there was verse 10, which became especially dear to me in my teenage years. My father and my mother did forsake me, and I was glad there was someone around who understood me. I prided myself in thinking that at least the Lord understood what I was all about.

Again, it wasn’t so much that I knew the psalm, but I had heard this verse, and I grabbed hold of it for all it was worth. And then there was the last verse, verse fourteen. Wait on the Lord. Be strong, let your heart take courage. Yes, I say, wait on the Lord.

I do recall chiding myself occasionally that I, after all, wasn’t a very patient person. And this verse did come to my attention occasionally, and I remember thinking about it in my earlier years. That the psalm was more familiar to others than to me was made plain shortly after I began my first ministry in southern New Jersey. I was calling on an older man. I don’t know whether older really describes him. He was venturing into his nineties. I thought of him more as ancient.

He had half a stomach because of cancer surgery, and he had suffered repeated repeated surgery and repeated heart attacks. But what a resilient fellow he was, a godly man who truly had given himself, despite his ordeals, to the doing of good. And he was known from one end of the community to the other as a man who was filled with the love of Christ. Well, he was in the hospital for one of his many operations, and he asked me if I wouldn’t read this psalm. And not only did he ask me to read it once when I visited him the first time, but each time I returned, this psalm was his request. So what was familiar to him became familiar to me, and I realized afterwards that it was familiar to a great number of people beyond him and besides me.

And the reason, the reason is clear. For you see, this psalm is one of the marvelous declarations of faith, triumphant over fear. Now whether you are of a mind, whether your heart is prepared to admit it, we are a people dogged by fear. I remember one of the truly emotional highs of my life was listening for the first time with understanding, I believe, to Mendelssohn’s Elijah. And there is a magnificent chorus in that oratorio that comes on the heels of Elijah’s battle with himself and his own terrors. It is the chorus, Be Not Afraid. And if you are familiar with that oratorio, have listened with understanding yourself, I think you too have resonated to that chorus.

Here. Here. Despite the bravado, Despite the boasts, despite our struts, despite our pretense, fear is a horrifying reality in our lives. And this song strikes to the heart of fear. Psalm twenty seven, then. A familiar song. And I trust one familiar to you. For good reason. But Psalm twenty seven is also the backwards song. When I said that. I noted a few raised eyebrows. What possibly could he mean?

Well, Psalm 27 is built upside down. It does not follow the ordinary line of construction that we find in other psalms. Now, if you want to have one to match it with and contrast it with, just look at Psalm 22, which presents you with the ordinary pattern. I don’t have to remind you how that 22nd Psalm begins.

My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? And so it goes on verse after verse, until close to the end of that 22nd Psalm, you finally are launched into this magnificent refrain of praise and triumph. If we were to speak of it simply, we could say that, first of all, we hear ordinarily the psalmist’s complaint, his cry to the Lord for help. And then, only then, do we hear about his confident trust in his God. Well, then you look at Psalm 27. an extraordinary psalm in the entirety of the Psalter.

Rather than beginning with the complaint or the cry for help, the psalmist starts out with this affirmation, this affirmation of God and this confession of his confident trust in the Lord. And it is only after he is expounded that that he goes on, beginning with verse seven, to express his complaint or to voice to voice is is.

Quivering, quivering heart to express. What troubles him to give expression to his cry before the Lord. So you move in this psalm in an extraordinary way. Not the ordinary structure, but rather its reverse. First of all, the confident confession, and then the cry for help. There can be instruction in that. For you see, in an extraordinary way then, that confident confession gains an emphasis that it doesn’t usually have.

In other words, going into the distress, going into that period of questioning and doubt, going into that period in which the cry seems appropriate, the psalmist here is saying that he does not go into that unarmed, but rather dressed up in the confident confession that God is his. So you move from confident confession in verses one through six to the complaint or the cry for help in seven through twelve, and then back again in thirteen and fourteen to that affirmation of the trustworthiness of God. Tonight we are looking at verses one through six, and here we will take note of Psalm 27, the beautifully constructed psalm.

This first section then, verses one through six, is before us. It divides neatly into two sections. Verses one through three, and then four through six. These two sections are held together by two images, and both of those images conveniently appear in the first verse.

The first image has to do with the description of the Lord as the light and also salvation. The Lord is my light and my salvation. Now, the explication of that image is not so much from what is said, but from what is not said. For you see, by describing the Lord as the light, the opposite of the light is brought into the picture. So you see, the issue is darkness, to which the Lord is the answer as light. But the image is deeper yet, more glorious. for it has behind it not just some sort of general consideration of God the Lord as illumination, dispelling darkness, it has instead a certain historical or certain cosmical reference. It has behind it the imagery of the dawning of the day, so that one may well say The Lord is my life and my salvation, but as well, the Lord is my God and my redemption.”

Now, the power of it is beginning to settle in as you realize how rich the imagery is. For the psalmist here is thinking of God as the rising of the sun dispelling the darkness, and with his rising there comes deliverance. But can the image be richer still? Yes, it can.

And powerfully gripping, For what the psalmist has done here is he’s transplanted the dawn into the darkness, not just after the darkness, but into the darkness, so that it is right in the midst of one’s darkness that the Lord is the light, my light, my dawn. The psalmist is writing of the terrors of night. And though it’s night, he has light, and his light is the Lord. You see how rich, how marvelously rich, how beautifully rich it is.

Now that’s the first image. And that image is going to be carried through this opening section, verses 1 through 6. And we will see how that develops. But verse 1 also tells us, gives to us, a second image. The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom shall I fear? What need is there now for fear? I have light in the night. But he goes on and he says, The Lord is the defense of my life. Think of it. Think of it against the background of the life of David. Here he is, wandering far. No, driven. Driven far from his home, his palace in Jerusalem. Very likely. Very likely.

There’s no city wall as a defense for him. There is no pavilion for him. There is no place of safety. He’s out in the open fields, running from and ahead of the armies of his enemies. But even in that circumstance, though stripped of a fortress, a refuge, of this world, he still has a refuge, a fortress.

His fortress is the Lord. None other than the Lord. Whom therefore shall I dread? If I have a fortress in God, that I dwell in safety.” Now, you see, the power of it is the same as we observed in the first image. There, it was in the midst of the night that the psalmist confesses God as his God. Here, it’s in the position of defenselessness. that the psalmist confesses that the Lord is his courtesan. Oh, what kind of piety is this? Oh, that I were trained by devotion like this. Am I fearful? Do I tremble? Am I quaking and distressed? Terror-filled, oftentimes paralyzed by my fear? My answer is found in the water.

Now he is a dawn and a light and a fortress and a refuge, not seen but to faith. The elements of creation are telling you that there is no light in the night, and there is no defense in your defenselessness. But the word of the Lord is telling you just the opposite.

Well, you can move on to verse 2. And here now, in verse 2 and again in verse 3, very conveniently now, The psalmist is going to expound on those images that he has introduced you to in the first verse. The second verse will correspond with what he has said concerning the Lord as his life, and the third verse will correspond with what he has said about the Lord as his defense. How beautifully it all works itself out, how wonderfully it’s put together. Verse two and verse three are added at this point in order to explain the extremity of the circumstances that have come upon the Psalmist in his flight. So emphasized here will be the size, the magnitude of that which the Psalmist faces.

How dark the night. How terrifying my defenseless state. Utterly. Utterly. It is the worst. There can be nothing worse. But yet, it is answered by the Lord. As extreme as it is, it is not too extreme for the Lord. No matter how great the terror, it is overcome by the great God who is light and refuge to his own. Well, the evildoers, verse 2, they now place in the context of this image of the night.

What typically terrifies people in a defenseless darkness? Have you been out in the wild? Have you felt the terror in your gut at sounds you didn’t understand, fearing that there was some ravenous beast out there somewhere, weeding, stalking? about to devour you. That’s the image.

The evildoers came upon me to devour my flesh. They were wild beasts. But you see, corollary to the image of the evildoers as wild beasts set upon devouring my flesh is the corollary of my defenselessness before them. There is no defense. I too am a weak, defenseless animal being stalked by a beast of prey, and not just one, a whole company. They come to devour my flesh.

And while the darkness would be a terror to me, it has become for me, because the Lord is my dawn, the undoing of my adversaries and my enemies. For though they may be compared to the wild beasts who do their stalking at night, and know the night very well, in the refrain that comes at the conclusion of verse two, it is actually now the adversary and the enemy that stumbles and falls, not able to make his way through the darkness.

Why? He has no light. He has no light. And in the end, he fails, while I am victorious. Not only the extremity of the night, then, and the terrors that arise in the night, but going on to verse 3, you see how the psalmist then portrays the desperateness of his condition. He speaks of himself in a solitary fashion, all alone. me by myself.

But yet now there is an host, a whole company. We’re talking about an entire army. An entire army now has encamped against me. I have taken refuge, however, in the Lord. My heart will not fear, I have a fortress. They’ve come upon me thinking that I am utterly defenseless, but my defense is found in the Lord. Though they may encamp against me an entire army, and though they wage war against me, as if all of the engines of war now are set against me alone.

In spite of all of this, I will be confident. our God is. Of course we see the perfections of this piety revealed to us in Jesus Christ. What could be more extreme than the darkness he saw? What could be more extreme than the host that beset him. Not Jews, not Romans, but the armies of hell. And before all, he was absolutely, wonderfully confident. He trusted. He said, into thy hands I commit my spirit.

The mention of Christ in conclusion leads us to verses 4-6 And I won’t spend a great deal of time on these verses tonight, because I’ve already taken a great deal of time getting to this point. But I would suggest to you that the images that have been used so far are used again. The image of light and dawn. Not really standing behind the opening statement of the fourth verse, one thing I have asked of the Lord that though I seek The seeking here, the word that is used for seeking, is that which is associated with the watchman. The watchman who stands and waits for the dawn. And you’ll note.

That the imagery of the fortress here finds its compliment. In the remarks about the house of the Lord, his temple, his tabernacle, the secret place of his tent, that walk upon which he, the psalmist, has been lifted up that place in which he then offers shelves of joy, he sings, he sings praises to the Lord, the military And the militant imagery that is so evident in the opening of this psalm, that which speaks about God as a defense, melts into the imagery of the sanctuary. So that in the end, you see, it’s no military fortress or refuge in which the psalmist finds his deliverance. It’s in the sanctuary of God, in the house of God. And that is the secret of life. It is the secret that the world does not understand.

It really believes that the answer is found in armaments and weapons. It really believes that the answer is found in huge military budgets. It really believes that the answers are found in strong armaments. It really believes that security is found in the military resolve of the people.

The ultimate place of refuge is not a military one at all. It is a religious one. It is the sanctuary of God. And upon that the psalmist has placed all of his confidence, hope and trust. And to that he has directed the entirety of his religious and spiritual energies. Such confidence as is expressed here doesn’t end with boasts of one’s own strength or prowess or ability. Such trust as is expressed here ends in songs of thanksgiving to God. So, what about our fears? As our minds are focused on the Lord our light, the Lord our refuge, and that dwelling place with Him, the ultimate abode of safety.

And in the midst of the darkness, before all of the threats and terrors that come upon us, we resolve to declare our confidence in him and to sing praises to his name. Paul and Silas are in jail. for preaching the gospel. It is night. And in the night, rehearsing the light of God, they sing psalms of praise.

The medicine for you in your fears is not a medicine devoid of praise. So, when the terrors come and the fears abound, affirm your faith, your trust in God and overflow despite the circumstance with thanksgiving. How rich your word, our Father, how marvelous its explication in Christ, and how, Lord, we are drawn into it so that what it expresses becomes the expression of our hearts. All of this a work of your mercy. Surely you have extended yourself to us in order that we, with the psalmist, who in the spirit of Christ speaks, might say, The Lord is my light. and my salvation. The Lord is the defense of my life. Whom shall I dread? No. We pray our God that in the midst of the night you would magnify yourself so that we confessing you would properly praise you for who you are.

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.