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 30, 1987.

Tonight we are in Psalm 27 once again. 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 mine enemies, they stumbled and fell. Though in host and camp against me, my heart will not fear. though war arise 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 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 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, he 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 up against me and such as breathe out cruelty. 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.”

In that wonderful demonstration of the effect of your word, your people respond in mercy. And so it is, Lord, throughout the world, as your people have been gathered together and there before them there have been rehearsed the needs of those who struggle, the needs of those who are ill, and truly, Lord, as the needs, whatever they be, have been rehearsed before your people, they, prompted by your Spirit, have responded, and this to glorify your name. For surely as you have been compassionate and revealed your compassion in Christ, so your people are demonstrating like compassion that they might be the children of their father and brothers and sisters of Jesus Christ, the righteous one. O Lord, may our hearts be melted by the need of those about us, especially those of the household of faith.

We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen. We have said that Psalm 27 is a familiar psalm, maybe not as familiar to us as some others, like the 23rd, for instance, but familiar nonetheless because of certain precious lines contained in this psalm. lines like the opening. The Lord is my light and my salvation. We know this line well. We also are familiar with verse four.

One thing have I asked from the Lord that will I 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 inquire in his temple. There is also verse 10, For my father and my mother have forsaken me, for as it is, I believe, in the King James, when my father and my mother forsake me, then the Lord will take me up. And finally, verse 14, Wait for the Lord, be strong, and let your heart take courage. Yes, I say, wait for the Lord.

Familiar, if for no other reason, than the familiarity of these verses, but also familiar, I believe, to those who have experienced deep distress, because this psalm has been rehearsed by many who have been face to face with deep fear, overtaken by terror.

I think I related to you the incident in my own life when I visited a man in his nineties who had been subjected to repeated surgery and was in once more because of a heart attack It was his fifth or sixth, and this was his favorite psalm, and he asked me to read it to him every time I visited him.

So Psalm 27, a familiar psalm, but we also pointed out that Psalm 47 isn’t an ordinary psalm. In fact, it is the backward psalm. The ordinary structure of the Psalms is to progress from the psalmist’s complaint to that expression of triumph and confidence. We hear ordinarily at the end of the psalm a ringing affirmation, a confession of the greatness and faithfulness of God. As I say, that’s the ordinary structure, and we find that structure in songs like Psalm 22, and we spoke about that last week. But Psalm 27 is built upside down.

Rather than beginning with the complaint, it begins with a confident confession, and then it moves to the complaint. But not leaving the confident confession, not leaving that out altogether, it does conclude with that marvelous 13th and 14th verses. So, yes, a familiar psalm, a backward psalm, but also a magnificently, beautifully constructed psalm.

We are dealing with the first six verses, and we have divided those six verses into verses one through three and then four through six, and we have said that these opening verses are expressive of the psalmist’s confidence before God. We have identified in these first three verses the dominant images, those that he uses to convey, speak about his confidence.

Those images are presented for you in the very first verse. The first one is found in the image of the light. The second one is found in the image of the refuge or the fence that is spoken of in the latter part of that first verse. Truly, these images are powerful. They are the images of the dawn, and the image of the fortress which God himself is to his people. As we go down through these verses, as we move into verse two, and then into verse three, we see that these images of the dawn, as the Lord is, and the fortress, which he also are intensified.

The defeat of the terrors of the night, which have stalked the psalmist as beasts, these terrors are dispelled, because the Lord is my dawn. And as my dawn, he is my salvation. The night may well be deep. The night may well be filled with terrors. But the Lord is my dawn. He is my light in the midst of it. I, in fact, do not have to wait for the rising of the sun, though it’s night. For God himself is my light in the midst of my night, and that night which is thought to be the friend of my enemies, for in it they stalk me. That night turns against them, for in the night they stumble and fall.

Verse two, then, intensifies the terror and likewise intensifies the confidence, that confession of confidence expressed by the psalmist. There is no night dark enough to obliterate or blot out the light which my God is. So great is my God. But if verse two intensifies the image of the dawn, that of the light in the midst of darkness, verse three intensifies the image of the fortress. the stronghold, the refuge. Here, the enemy is looked upon as an entire army, even if he isn’t. He is looked upon as an entire army coming against a solitary figure, the psalmist. And while that’s the case, while at host in camps against me.

While war arises against me, I am not troubled, I am not moved, I don’t quake, and I don’t fear, because, you see, I have a fortress sufficient to the threat. My fortress is none other than God Himself. I will not then fear, in spite of all of this, I shall remain confident.” Now, you see the power and the force of it, and I have been pushing you in that direction as we move through these first three verses.

You see, it’s not after the distress is dispelled that the light begins to shine. It’s not sequential here, rather it’s in the midst of the distress that the dawn is affirmed. That being the statement of confidence and trust in the Lord. Here is the mature expression of a believer’s faith that though he stare into the night, the dawn enlightens him. And though many threats assail the siege, he has a secure dwelling in God. You may well say, he sees things that aren’t there. The psalmist says, by my faith, I perceive things that are, but are not apparent to those who do not believe. Of course, we know that subjectively our Lord perfectly exhibited the kind of trust that is expressed here. And having done so, he himself has become a light to us. objectively in the night. I am the light of the world, he said.

Well, that’s verses 1-3. I didn’t do a very good job on verses 4-6 last week, so we’ll try again. In verses four through six, we are still dealing with the confident confession of the song. His expression of despair or his cry for help does not erupt until verse seven, so we are still at this point in the middle of his confident confession. The testimony of his trust.

And as we see that the force of these verses is somewhere along the same line, we realize as well that the images that have appeared initially are carried through here. The image of the dawn, or the light, is used again in these verses, and the image of the refuge, or the fortress, the shelter, the stronghold, it appears here as well.

Now, they will be altered a bit, but they are here nonetheless. For instance, when we look at verse four, we hear the psalmist there speaking about the dawn, about the light, in a very cryptic and compressed way. He says, one thing I have asked of the Lord, that I shall seek. Now this truly is a compressed expression.

For you see, these words that end that first line hold within them an allusion to the dawn, an allusion to the light. And it is an allusion that, first of all, arises out of the military imagery of the first three verses. That imagery that is appropriate to a fortress, a stronghold, the language of a siege, go and host and camp against me, etc. On the first line, this wording conveys to us the impression of light and dawn within those words that end it, as if when you read them and think about and think upon the seeking of the psalmist, you have him portrayed here as a watchman, much like a watchman who is set as a guard, as a sentry in the camp.

In other words, I will seek after this thing of which I have asked the Lord as the watchman does the dawn. As the watchman awaits the dawn, as he awaits the sun, as he awaits the light, so I wait for that thing I have asked of the Lord. But having said that, we haven’t exhausted the power and force of this line, for the language is even more complex. It conveys not only a military image, that of the watchman set a century, but it also expresses to us something that is highly charged religiously. It conveys to us the expectation of the dawn by the priest of the Lord, or by that worshipper who is awaiting that dawn that he might appear before God and there worship the Lord and offer his morning devotion.

What the psalmist is expressing here, in a very complex, to be sure, and very compressed way, is this. The single desire of the watchman in the night is for the dawn, and as that watchman waits, so I wait, longingly, expectantly, for the dawn that I might appear before God.

Now you realize that what the psalmist has done here is something wonderful, poetically. For as he has moved now from verses 1-3 to 4-6, He has changed the force of his direction and his focus. Formerly, it was as he was involved as the sentry, the watchman in the military camp, but now you see the image is changed and it becomes one that is religious in its character. So charged is it religiously that it even conveys to us through the psalmist a sense of a religious discipline.

In other words, the dawn brings with it the opportunity to be once more in the house of God. Thus the psalmist longs for the dawn with the keenest and most intense longing We can imagine, and this is the point at which the discipline becomes apparent. We can imagine the lonely watchman intensely anticipating the end of his night watch. But can we, can we, I say, easily imagine the priest or the worshipper of the Lord equally anticipating the morning prayer or the morning sacrifice? for the opportunity of the morning in the house of God. But that is exactly, exactly what the psalmist is saying.

You might scour Israel for a priest who wants to get up in the morning and get to the temple. You might look long and hard for a worshipper that can’t wait to get to the house of God. You might do a little self-examination. But do you see the constraint? Do you see the constraint?

He can’t wait to get there. And there is nothing he wants more. When I have to convince you to come to church, I’ve already lost you. I’ve already lost you. If it’s a battle, I find myself in, when I’m talking to you about you being in worship, I might as well save my breath. Do you see what’s pushing the man? Do you see what’s constraining the soul? More than wanting to go to work. Well, more than wanting to do anything else. chief of the desires of the psalmist is to be in the house of the Lord.

I called on an older woman, a member of my congregation, who had fallen and broken the She was laid up in the hospital and I called on her on a Sunday afternoon. I was grieved by her tears. She was no ordinary elderly woman. Why her tears? For her broken leg? No. Feeling sorry for herself? No. She hadn’t been able to go to church. Well, you see, with the same longing that the Watchmen awaits the dawn. The psalmist awaits his appearance before God in the temple.

But there’s so much more here than what we’ve expressed so far. You see, what he’s longing for here is the dawning of a day in which the dawn never ends. What he is anticipating here is entrance into the house of the Lord so that you’ll never have to leave it again. And if he is but a worshipper and not part of the priesthood, you see, what he wishes for himself is a participation in a perpetual priesthood, so that he might appear there, as the priests do within Israel, before the Lord. But not as they do, they having to leave that temple know even better to stay there perpetually and never have to depart. So more than the dawning of any ordinary day, you see, the psalmist is looking for the dawning of the day of the Lord, when the light, in all of its glory and brilliance, will never fade, not be diminished one whit. And the house which the Lord has prepared as a refuge for his people, A temple not made with hands, eternal in the heavens, is made plain to them and before them.

They enter into it. And when that happens, you see, though it be the day of trouble, he will conceal me, and in the secret place of his tent he will hide me. And though I have known humiliation to the depths, He will lift me up upon a rock, I will not be moved, and my head will be exalted above my enemies round me. And then commences the times of eternal celebration when I offer in his tent sacrifices of shouts and joys, and I sing praises to him perpetually. You see, the psalmist is longing for eternity. And he wishes to move into eternity. Into that state where the light shines perpetually. and I am forever secure.

But one last point for you. Do you perceive the movement from the first part verses 1 through 3 to the second part 4 through 6? You see in the first part It says, if the psalmist is stationary, he’s stationary in the circumstance that surrounds him, and it says, if in that circumstance, eternity moves in upon him, the dawn greets him in the midst of his distress. But now, in 4-6, It is not eternity that is moving into the experience of the psalmist. Rather, the psalmist is moving toward eternity itself.

And in this, you have the comprehension of the totality of the believer’s life. On the one hand, the blessings of eternity are already bombarding you. is already shining in you. The light has come, and therefore you need not fear and you need not dread. For the Lord is your God, and He is your defense. But while that is true, and while the Lord has moved in upon you, Still, you are moving as well toward Him. And toward the ultimate realization, the ultimate glory of the light revealed in the day of and the revelation of the fact that you have a home above, secure with him forever.

The totality of a believer’s life, and surely as it was formally in verses 1 through 3, Now it is with verses four through six. Jesus both subjectively and objectively becomes the focus of what is spoken out here. For he is the one who above everything else has desired to dwell in the presence of his father. the one who has entered into that flowing.

And objectively, he himself. He himself, again, our light. He himself, our habitation. A tabernacle of refuge for us all. Let us pray. We rejoice, Father, in this glorious comprehension of the believer’s life. Oh that in our experience you have made entrance that we here may know the dawn of redemption and the wonder of your protective care. you a fortress for us. But simultaneously, we moving and expressing desires complementary of that movement toward the light and toward our home above. O Father, is there anything that you have left unresolved, unattended to, in your Word, in your Son? Nothing whatever. He is completely sufficient, and in Him we find our complete rest. 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.