in our Bibles this evening to
the book of Psalms, and let's look tonight at Psalm 27. As long as God has a people in
this world, the book of Psalms will hold a special place in
their hearts. You know, most of these Psalms
were written by David, and from his many varied experiences,
God's people find comfort. David had many experiences because,
remember, he was a shepherd, he was son-in-law to a king who
hated him, tried to kill him, He was a warrior. He led men
in battle and was very successful. God blessed him. He was a king
and ruled over the nation, which made him the judge of that entire
people. He was a prophet. The Apostle
Peter tells us that on the day of Pentecost. And he was a father. And he had many experiences because
of all of these different parts that he played. God's people
find comfort in the book of Psalms in times of joy and in times
of affliction. God's people turn, it seems like,
almost instinctively to the book of Psalms. The Lord is my light
and my salvation. Whom shall I fear? The Lord is
the strength of my life, of whom shall I be afraid? When the wicked,
even mine enemies and my foes, came upon me to eat up my flesh,
they stumbled and fell. Though an host should encamp
against me, my heart shall not fear. Though war should rise
against me, in this will I be confident. One thing have I desired
of the Lord, That will I 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 inquire in his temple. For in the time of
trouble, he shall hide me in his pavilion. In the secret of
his tabernacle shall he hide me. He shall set me upon a rock. And now shall mine head be lifted
up above mine enemies round about me. Therefore will I offer in
his tabernacle sacrifices of joy. I will sing, yea, I will
sing praises unto the Lord. Hear, O Lord, when I cry with
my voice. Have mercy also upon me and answer
me. When thou saidest, seek ye my
face, my heart said unto thee, thy face, Lord, will I seek. Had not thy face far from me,
put not thy servant away in anger, thou hast been my help. Leave
me not, neither forsake me, O God of my salvation. When my father
and my mother forsake me, then the Lord will take me up. Teach
me thy way, O Lord, and lead me in a plain path because of
mine enemies. Deliver me not over unto the
will of mine enemies, for false witnesses are risen up against
me, and such as breathe out cruelty. I had fainted unless I had believed
to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait
on the Lord. Be of good courage, and he shall
strengthen thine heart. Wait, I say, on the Lord. I want to point out four things
to us tonight from this psalm. First, David's Lord. We recognize, of course, when
we see the word Lord in the King James translation of the scriptures,
it is Jehovah. It is the name of God, Jehovah,
His covenant name, the name which declares Him to be eternal and
self-existent. He needs nothing. He gives to
all. He is the Lord, David's Lord,
the Lord Jehovah. And he proclaims, or he testifies,
that the Lord is my light, my salvation, and the strength of
my life. David, like all men, we are born
in this world, as the Apostle Paul says, darkness. Many times people read that verse
of Scripture and they think that Paul is saying that we are born
in darkness. That's not what he said. He said
we are darkness. Ephesians 5 and verse 8, he said,
for you were sometimes darkness, but now are you light in the
Lord. He doesn't say, the Apostle Paul,
he doesn't say that at one time they were in darkness, but they
were And that's the condition of you, that's the condition
of me, that's the condition of every person who comes into this
world. Darkness. Blind. Blind. Spiritually blind. And by nature, we love darkness. We are not only darkness, but
we love darkness. And the Lord Jesus Christ tells
us why it is that we love darkness, because our deeds are evil. Men hate the light and will not
come to the light. The Lord Jesus Christ, He is
the light. And David, he had experienced
the regenerating power of God in the new birth. He'd been effectually
called by God the Holy Spirit to trust in the Lord Jesus Christ
as his Lord and as his Savior. In his day, he was trusting in
the Christ who was promised to come. He trusted in Christ, and
notice he confessed that the Lord, He is my light, my salvation,
and the strength of my life. He does not say that the Lord
gives me light. Do you see that? He doesn't say
that the Lord gives me light. He doesn't say that the Lord
gives me salvation. And he doesn't say that the Lord
gives me strength. What does he say? He says, the
Lord is my light. The Lord is my salvation. The Lord is the strength of my
life. Now there's a difference, isn't
there? Between Him giving us light and Him being our light. Between Him giving us salvation
and Him being our salvation. There's a difference. Paul again
in 1 Corinthians, he said, but of him, that is of God, but of
him are you in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom
and righteousness and sanctification and redemption. He is my wisdom. He is my righteousness. He is my sanctification. He is
my redemption. That's what David is confessing
here. The Lord is. Now, this tells
us that there's a union. There's a union between David
and his Lord. For him to say, He is my light. He's my salvation. There's a
union. Our Lord spoke of it in the New
Testament as the vine and the branches. And such an easy illustration
to see, isn't it? The vine and the branches. A
branch by itself withers and dies and never, never can and
never does produce fruit. But a branch in the vine, that's
that union and that's that vital union, that vital union that
must exist between a believer and Christ. We are in Him. We are in union with Him by faith. By faith we trust in Him and
He is in union with us by the Spirit of God. Remember Paul
said to the Colossians, Christ in you. Not only Christ with
us and Christ for us, but Christ in you, the hope of glory. And that's what David is saying
here. The Lord is my light. He's not just saying He gives
me light, that's true, but He is my light. And I would have
no light apart from Him. He is my salvation, and I would
have no salvation apart from Him. He is the strength of my
life and I would have no strength, no spiritual strength, power
at all without Christ because we are in union. I'm in union
with Christ. That's the confession, the condition
of every child of God. When we hear the gospel and when
we are brought by the Spirit of God to trust in the Lord Jesus
Christ, then we are in union, recognized union with Christ. When the psalmist here says,
the Lord is my light, in the scriptures, light is used to
signify several different things. It signifies purity, purity,
or we might say holiness. The Lord is my purity. I have no holiness of my own.
The Lord is my sanctification. That's what Paul means, isn't
it, when he says, He has made unto us wisdom, righteousness,
sanctification. He is my holiness. How holy must
a person be to To reside in the presence of God Almighty, the
thrice holy God, he must, she must be as holy as God is. The Lord is my light. The Lord is my sanctification.
The Lord is my holiness. And not only is light sometimes
a symbol of purity, but also of peace. Peace. The Lord is my peace. I have
no peace with God apart from Him. Therefore, being justified
by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Never apart, never separate from
Christ does any man or woman have peace with God. In fact,
the scripture says there's no peace to the wicked. No peace. The Lord is my light, He's my
sanctification, He's my peace, and also it sometimes refers
to joy. Joy. The Lord, He is our joy. This is the reason the Apostle
Paul in the New Testament exhorts us several times in one letter,
rejoice in the Lord. And again I say unto thee, rejoice
in the Lord. I think most all of us are guilty
of rejoicing in circumstances. And circumstances change. And so, some of us are up and
sometimes we're down, sometimes we're up, sometimes we're down,
as our circumstances are altered. But if we could train ourselves
to rejoice in Christ, He never changes. He is the same yesterday,
today, and forever. The Lord is my light. He's my
purity. He's my peace. He's my joy. Nehemiah
said this, The joy of the Lord is my strength, or is thy strength. The joy of the Lord is my strength. You know, we grow weak. in the things of God when we
lose that joy. And that's Psalm 51 where David
prayed, that Psalm of repentance. Remember one of the requests,
not only to blot out my iniquities, but he also prayed, restore unto
me the joy of thy salvation. The Lord is my light. The Lord
is my salvation. Now, salvation is a big word,
isn't it? It's a big word. There are many
things included under that word. Sometimes we call it an umbrella
word, because there are many things under this umbrella, this
word salvation. First of all, there's pardon. There's pardon. Now that's wonderful,
isn't it? Pardon. Our sins are pardoned. And there's also adoption. That's even more wonderful. You know, it's one thing for
the governor of a state to pardon a criminal who's been convicted
and is guilty. I'm sure he's thankful, he's
grateful, she's grateful that the governor seemed fit to grant
them a pardon, but I've never heard of any governor pardoning
a criminal and then saying, by the way, I want to adopt you. I want to make you one of my
children. But God does. There's justification
being declared righteous before God. As I said, this word salvation,
it's a big word and it is all found in Christ. The Lord is my salvation and
He's my strength. Without Him, we would have no
strength. Now that brings me to the second
thing I want us to observe. So first of all, David's Lord.
The Lord, Jehovah, is my light, my salvation, and is the strength
of my life. Now second, David's enemies. David's enemies. I'm sure we've
all heard a saying that goes something like this, You can
tell a lot about a person by his friends. And that's true. You can tell a lot about a person
by his friends. And it is equally true, you can
tell a lot about a person by his enemies. His enemies. The Lord Jesus said this, Woe
unto you, woe unto you, when all men speak well of you. For so did their fathers, the
false prophets." Everyone spoke well of the false prophets. That's
what our Lord said, isn't it? There were many false prophets.
And Peter tells us, as there were false prophets in those
days, in that dispensation, so there shall be many false prophets
in this dispensation. And the fathers, our Lord said,
your fathers spoke well. of them. God's people naturally
have enemies. We have three enemies always.
The world is our enemy. The world is not our friend.
I'm talking about the attitude of this world. That's not our
friend. Satan, the devil, he's not our
friend. And we have this old nature,
the flesh, which is certainly not our friend. We always have
enemies. Now if a person doesn't have
these enemies, you can tell a lot about him. You can tell he's
not a true child of God. If he doesn't have that enemy
of the flesh that he carries with him all the time, that loves
to to do things that are wicked and evil, lusting against that
new nature that desires to live a life of holiness and godliness. Well, I want us to look at this
psalm. There's four times in the psalm that David mentions
his enemies. And let's see what he says about
them. First, in verse two, When the wicked even mine enemies. The first thing he says about
his enemies is that they are wicked. The wicked. Listen to what he said about
the wicked in Psalm 9 and verse 17. He said, the wicked shall
be turned into hell and all the nations that forget God. Let
me encourage you sometime to take your concordance and look
up the word wicked wicked, and just see, especially in the Psalms,
what is associated with the wicked so often. I mean, time after
time after time, the wicked are marked over and over again as
being proud. Proud, bolsters. God's people, the Lord Jesus
Christ said, Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is
the kingdom of heaven. The wicked, they're not poor
in spirit. They're proud. They're boasters. And this Bible says in 1 Peter,
God resisteth the proud and giveth grace to the humble. God's people
are marked. Not by being proud and haughty,
self-sufficient, but as poor and needy. Spiritually, I'm speaking
about poor and needy. Blessed are they that hunger
and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled. But
listen to what David says about his friends. That's what he says
about the wicked. You see it if you go through
the Psalms over and over again, the wicked, they're bolsters,
and the wicked shall be turned into hell. Those were his enemies. Those are our enemies, the wicked. Now, this is what he said about
his friends. In Psalm 141 and verse 5, David
said this, let the righteous smite me. Let the righteous smite
me, it shall be a kindness. And let him reprove me, it shall
be an excellent oar, which shall not break my head. Nathan, Nathan
the prophet smote him. What did he say? Let the righteous
smite me, It shall be a kindness, and let him reprove me. It shall
be an excellent oil. And Nathan was his friend, not
his enemy, his friend, and Nathan smote him when he said, Thou
art the man. And what was that to David? It
was an excellent oil. Oil at that time, of course,
was used as a medicine, wasn't it? Remember the Samaritan poured
in oil and wine when he tried to help that man he found in
the ditch. Oil is for healing. And it was excellent oil to David
when his friend told him, you're the man. Thou art the man. He smote him. You know, in the
New Testament, talking about enemies and friends, In 1 Corinthians
chapter 15 in verse 33, the apostle said, be not deceived, evil communications,
and that word is companions, evil companions corrupt good
manners. Sometimes young people don't
understand why their parents are so strict and so determined
that their friends be other young people that they would want them
to be associated with. Because evil companions corrupt
good manners. David's enemies, the wicked. Now notice the second thing he
tells us about his enemies in verse 6. And now shall mine head
be lifted up above mine enemies round about me. His enemies were
round about him. They watched him. They watched for him to make
a mistake. They looked for something that
he might do or say with which they could accuse him, use against
him. And he recognized this truth.
He recognized that his enemies were round about him, and this
helped him, caused him to walk circumspectly, as we are told
in the New Testament. The third thing he says about
his enemies, look down to verse 11. Teach me thy way, O Lord,
and lead me in a plain path, because of mine enemies. How many times, how many times
have I pointed this out to us, and how many times have we noticed
that the Lord can, and many times does, bring good out of intended
evil. His enemies They were round about
him and they were just looking for him to fall, for him to make
a mistake. But how does God bring good out
of this? David, recognizing that truth
that his enemies were round about him, he desires that the Lord
teach him, teach him his way. Lead him, not only teach him,
teach me thy way, O Lord, but lead me in a plain path, in a
clear path, so I cannot make a mistake, so I cannot waver
off the path because of mine enemies. And then the fourth
time he mentions his enemies is in verse 12. Deliver me not over unto the
will of mine enemies, for false witnesses are risen up against
me, and such as breathe out cruelty. David's enemies, now notice this,
David's enemies caused him to pray, to pray. Deliver me not over. It caused
him to pray. And I thought about these words
of John Newton. It's a hymn that he wrote. We've
never sung it here. In fact, I don't believe I've
ever sung it anywhere, but I've heard it sung. You're familiar
with it, I'm sure, but let me read it to us. I ask the Lord
that I might grow in faith and love and every grace. Might more
of his salvation know and seek more earnestly his face. T'was
he who taught me thus to pray, and he, I trust, has answered
prayer. But it has been in such a way
as almost drove me to despair. I hoped that in some favored
hour at once he'd answer my request. and by his love's constraining
power, subdue my sins and give me rest. Instead of this, he
made me feel the hidden evils of my heart, and let the angry
powers of hell assault my soul in every part. Yea, more, with
his own hand he seemed intent to aggravate my woe. crossed all the fair designs
I schemed, blasted my gourds and laid me low. Lord, why is
this, I trembling cry, wilt thou pursue thy worm to death? Tis in this way, the Lord replied,
I answer prayer for grace and faith. These inward trials I
employ from self and pride to set thee free. and break thy
schemes of earthly joy, that thou mayest find thy all in me."
David's enemies caused him to pray. And many times when we
pray, God answers in a way that we never imagined. But he answers. Now, here's the third thing I
want to point out in this psalm. David's desire. One thing, one
thing have I desired. One thing have I desired of the
Lord. Verse 4. That will I 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 inquire in his temple.
For in the time of trouble he shall hide me in his pavilion,
In the secret of his tabernacle shall he hide me. He shall set
me up upon a rock, and now shall mine head be lifted up above
mine enemies round about me. Therefore will I offer in his
tabernacle sacrifices of joy. I will sing, yea, I will sing
praises unto the Lord. David's desire, one thing have
I desired of the Lord, that will I seek after. What is, what does
David mean here? That I may, one thing have I
desired of the Lord, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord
all the days of my life. Well it's not heaven. That's
not what he's talking about in this place. It's not heaven because
heaven is the Father's house. Here he speaks about the Lord's
house. In the New Testament, the Apostle
Paul wrote, the house of God, which is the church of the living
God. John Gill, his comment here was,
the place of divine worship seems to be meant. The place of divine
worship seems to be meant. And he speaks of that place,
that tabernacle in his day, because he talks about the secret place. The secret place, what would
that be? That would be the Holy of Holies, wouldn't it? He speaks
about the sacrifices. He speaks about the beauty of
the Lord. When he would go to the tabernacle, and let's just say it was the
Day of Atonement. on the great day of atonement.
And he would see the ceremony there. The priest, the high priest
dressed in that white linen garment first offering a sacrifice for
his sins and carrying that blood within the holy place. Now David
could not go into that place and he could not see into that
place. But the whole ceremony, the whole rite, the whole, it
was a shadow, wasn't it? It was a picture of Christ. And
in one of the Psalms, he seems to even envy the swallows, the
birds, he said, who made their nest in the altars. One thing have I desired of the
Lord. What is it, David? that I may
dwell in the house of the Lord forever, that I may be in that
place of worship. Now, for him in that dispensation,
there was one place. You know, the nation of Israel,
they got in trouble a lot, didn't they? By their idolatry, trying
to worship God in the groves, on the mountains, or wherever. But God had placed His name in
one place. And that's where they were to
worship. That's where they were to see
the beauty of the Lord. His holiness, God's holiness
demonstrated there by the sacrifices that were offered in that tabernacle. For us, for you and I, this can
only speak of one place and that's right here. right where we are
tonight. Is that the one thing that you
desire? David did. You say, well why do you say
it's this place right here? Because the Lord Jesus Christ
said where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in their
midst. He didn't say, I'll come and
be in their midst. He said, I am in their midst. And when we gather here in the
name of the Lord Jesus Christ, Christ is here. And this is where
I desire to be. Public worship with God's people. It's a sad day when many people
who profess to be God's people have very little concern and
very little desire to be in a worship service. That has to be a sad
condition. But notice the last thing here
in this psalm. We've seen David's Lord. We've
seen David's enemies. We've seen David's desire. I
want you to notice David's victory. David's victory, verses 13 and
14. I had fainted unless I had believed
to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living." One
of the reasons that the Psalms are so special to God's people
is because, like here, David, he doesn't tell us exactly what
it was, what he was going through at this particular time, but
whatever it was, it caused him to be right at the point of feigning, right at the point of feigning. And the reason the Psalms are
such a blessing to God's people, we can put ourselves, whatever
our affliction is, whatever our trial is, whatever our difficulty
is that we're going through, whatever it is that brings us
right up to the point of feigning, of turning back, of giving up, David's victory is he believed. Faith. I had fainted unless I
had believed to see the beauty, the goodness of the Lord in the
land of the living. When I'm tempted to give up,
to turn back, to be overwhelmed with my problem, here is always
the answer. Believe God. I had fainted unless
I had believed to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the
living. David's believing the Lord caused him to remember these
two things. My place, my place is to wait
on the Lord. And number two, to be of good
courage. That's my place. to wait on the
Lord. I must live on God's promises
upon His faithfulness and not my feelings. Not my feelings, not my present
condition, whatever it may be. I must live upon God's promises
and God's faithfulness. He has promised that He will
never leave us. He will never forsake us. You
know, we look at Isaiah 43 quite often. You're familiar with that
place. And we remind ourselves that
God never promises us that we will not go through the water,
that we will not go through the fire. He never promises that. But what He does promise is that
when we go through the waters, they will not overwhelm us. And when we go through the fire,
it shall not burn us. It shall not destroy us. David's
psalm, the Lord is my light and my salvation. Whom shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my
life. Of whom shall I be afraid? I pray that the Lord would bless
these words and thoughts to all of us here tonight