How do you feel when you hear someone say, “Trust me.”  You may answer “It depends on who’s saying it!”  How do we feel about someone speaking to a mass audience saying “Trust me” or “Trust us.”  If you are anything like me (and I don’t think I’m that unrepresentative) you hear such claims with some degree of mistrust or skepticism at the very least.  We have trust issues and it’s understandable.  Our trust in people/ideologies/systems/whatever has been broken time and time again.  “What’s your angle?” we ask.  “What’s the catch?” 

What’s my angle?  When we come together before God we want to hear good news, and here’s the first bit of good news.  The message is not “Trust me” or even “Trust us.”  We’re going to begin with the end, though this good news encompasses the beginning, middle, and the end.  It’s “Trust God.”  This morning we’re looking at a Psalm of confidence.  A Psalm of trust in God.  Let us look at Psalm 27 this morning and hear what God has to say to our hearts as we seek His face.

Many people name Psalms of Confidence as their favourite.  Psalms that confidently speak about who God is.  The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.  The Lord is your guard and your shade.  The Lord is my strength and my song.  What beautiful imagery.  They speak about what the Lord does.  He makes me lie down in green pastures.  He will hide me in his shelter in the day of trouble.  He will set me high on a rock.  They don’t specify the trouble which the psalmist faces.  As we’ve said through these weeks, these songs/prayers apply to any situation in life… or death.  It’s interesting that the two lines from the Psalms which Christ prays from the cross are a cry of lament – “My God my God why have you forsaken me?” and a cry of confidence – “Into your hands, I commend my spirit.”

Psalms of confidence speak to something fundamental about what it means to follow Christ.  They say something fundamental about the nature of faith.  About what it means to believe.  To believe in God, to follow Christ, is to trust.  Following Christ is not just about merely assenting to a set of propositions.  Of course, there are things which we believe.  We believe that Christ is the Son of God, we believe that Christ died and rose again and is seated at the right hand of the Father from whence he will come again.  We believe in the Holy Spirit’s presence and guidance.  We believe all those things and they don’t offend our intellects.  We do not check our intellects at the door.  At the same time, we freely admit that there are matters beyond our understanding; that awe and wonder are in order as faith seeks understanding. We don’t check out intellects at the door while recognizing that this is no dry intellectual exercise with which we are engaged friends.  Following Christ is not simply a belief in the existence of the divine or some ethereal unsubstantive cosmic force or good vibes. It’s a question and the question is ever before each of us no matter where we stand today on matters of faith.  Here it is.  “Whom do we trust?”  In whom or in what do you trust?  On what do we base our lives?  To what do we commit ourselves?  What are we committed to?

This is how the song starts.  With the answer.  The LORD.  YAHWEH.  The one who has made himself known as a deliverer.  The LORD is my light and my salvation.  The light.  The one who drives away darkness.  The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light.  The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.   The LORD is my salvation.  We talked about this last week.  Remembering our deliverer.  Remembering the one who makes a way.  The root word is translated help, deliverance, and save.  One writer puts it like this – “It covers a wide range of meanings, indicating deliverance, liberation from any kind of restraint or oppression, physical, mental or spiritual.  It points to a life of wholeness and freedom under God, a life in which people have the space to be what God intended them to be.”  Who does God intend us to be?  His beloved children bearing his image and being formed into that image through the life and death and resurrection of his son in the power of his Holy Spirit.  “The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear?  The Lord is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?” (v1)

Now you may be sitting there saying “This is all very good and true David but you’re not telling us anything we don’t already know or haven’t heard thousands of times.”  Again, we need to be reminded.  Because circumstances arise in our lives that make these truths hard to see sometimes.  Because circumstances swirl around us that would cause us to fear.  We remind one another because confessions of confidence like this are not meant to be done solely on our own.  Trust is not a personal project based on our own resolve or own willpower.  We come together to be reminded that the LORD is our light and salvation and guard and shade and strength and song and to ask – “Of whom shall I be afraid?” in confidence and answer like they used to in the Bad Boy Furniture ads here in the GTA and say “Nobody!” Nothing!

We need to be reminded because we will be found by days of trouble.  The first half of this Psalm (vv 1-6) is a profession of confidence in God.  The second half (vv 7-14) is a prayer that contains a lot of lament.  The Psalm is a recognition that days of trouble find us.  That we don’t always go from strength to strength.  The Psalmist describes these days as evildoers assailing him to devour his flesh (figuratively speaking), as an army encamping against him and war rising up against him (maybe not figuratively speaking).  The Psalm is a confident assertion that the singer has nothing to fear because as someone would later put it, there is nothing that will separate him from God’s love – For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:38-39)  

Do you need to hear those words?  I need to hear those words – often and meaningfully.  What might it mean for us to have that kind of confident trust?  The kind that enables us to truthfully say “Though an army encamp against me, my heart shall not fear; though war rise up against me, yet I will be confident.” (v3)

How could we get to such a place?  What would we need?  V4 – “One thing I asked of the LORD that I will seek after: to live 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.” 

To live in the house of the Lord.  The temple was where the presence of the Lord resided for the ancient Israelites.  The Psalmist longs to live in the presence of God every day of his life.  To see the beauty of God.  To see the beauty of God’s love, God’s grace, God’s compassion, God’s justice, God’s tenderness, God’s strength.  To be ever more at home, hidden in the shelter of God’s house in the day of trouble, concealed under the cover of God’s tent, set high on a rock.  Living the shalom life!  Remember the question that Andrew and another disciple asked of Jesus in John 1 as they began to follow Jesus?  “Rabbi, where are you staying?”  Where are you living?  We want to be where you are.  We want to be in your presence.  “Come and see,” Jesus told them.   The Psalmist longs to be in God’s presence every day of his life. 

We trust in God who has proven himself to be trustworthy.  To live in Christ is to remember Christ’s promises.  It’s unimaginable to be abandoned by a parent, though it’s not impossible.  “If my father and mother forsake me, the Lord will take me up.” (v 10)  How can we hear this and not think of Jesus’ promise, “I will not leave you orphaned…” (John 14:18)  How can we not hear Jesus’ words echo, “And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” (Matt 28:20)  To live in Jesus - to live in the truth of “Christ in you, the hope of glory” - is to make a home for the Holy Spirit, and to be at home with God.  We gather together to praise together, to give thanks together, to remember together, and to express our confidence together.  We do this and offer sacrifices.  The sacrifice of ourselves.  The sacrifice of abandoning ourselves in loving trust in our delivering God.  Hearing one another offer shouts of joy, and singing and making melody to the Lord. 

Following Jesus is like a trip (that’s why it’s called The Way).  To be in Christ on the Way is to be at home on the way.  To be at home on the way is to come to see the beauty of the Lord – God’s love, compassion, strength, justice, mercy, tenderness – everywhere.  To see a sparrow and have it remind us of God’s provision and care even for the tiny sparrow.  Not one falls to the ground apart from our Father.  To hear a song that touches us deeply – to sing or play such a song.  To see someone comfort the sorrowing.  I will never forget one of my first experiences of being with a family whose husband and father had died at Sunnybrook Veteran’s Centre. We were all around the bed.  The man’s wife needed to be helped to a chair, she was overcome.  One of the nurses helped her get to the chair.  When the wife was seated, the nurse got down beside her and put her arm around her.  That was reflective of God’s care and compassion.  It was beautiful.  May we ask God give us eyes to see his beauty expressed in his love all around us every day?  May He give us the wisdom to ask for guidance and the courage to follow where he would lead us?

It’s a lifetime process.  It’s something we need to persevere in, to hold fast to, to encourage one another in.  To take the time to stop.  To be silent.  To be able to hear our hearts.  To be able to hear that still small voice nudging our hearts.  “Come,” my heart says, “seek his face.”  Thank you, my heart, for reminding me!  Come, seek his face.  What does this look like practically?  We’ve been talking about it over these 4 weeks and we’ll keep on talking about it.  Praising God.  Maybe in song.  Maybe in word.  “Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.”  To give thanks.  To say thank you.  To remember God’s acts of deliverance as they’ve been passed down to us in God’s word.  To remember God’s acts of deliverance in our lives.  To trust.  To place our confidence in.  To say along with the hymn writer “Did we in our own strength confide, our striving would be losing.”  To listen to our hearts when they’re saying “Come, seek his face!” and turning to God and saying yes and praying “Your face, Lord, do I seek.  Do not hide your face from me.”

Because these promises can be hard to see.  Circumstances can make them hard to see.  Things don’t turn out the way we thought they would.  We lose things.  We suffer loss.  I don’t need to paint the picture for you. 

And yet, loss need not have the last word.  And yet there’s something inside us that says “Seek his face.”  We need to listen to that heart voice.  It’s how God created us.  To seek him.  How is it going with your seeking of God’s face?  Good? Bad?  You have no idea.  Great, it’s excellent and God’s changing you in ways you never imagined.  You’re seeing things in ways you never thought possible?  Or maybe it’s terrible and you feel you’re seeking the wrong things – because we’re going to be seeking something.  If you ever want to talk about any of that I’d love to talk about those things. 

Listen to the prayer in verse 11.  “Teach me your way, O LORD, and lead me on a level path.  Do not give me up to the will of my adversaries, for false witnesses have risen up against me, and they are breathing out violence.”  In ancient Israel, they didn’t have trials with lawyers and evidence and so on.  A false witness, a liar, could mean bad news.  Who is our enemy if not the liar.  The accuser.  The voices that say “Your worth as a person is in what you earn/produce/consume/look like/number of followers/likes.”  The voices that say “What makes you think you’re worthy of this kind of love?”  The voices that say “You don’t need God and in fact that’s only for people who are weak or deluded or stupid.”  These voices swirl around us all the time.  Take the time to listen to that heart voice that says “Seek his face.”  That is where salvation and deliverance and wholeness and peace and life are to be found.

The psalm ends with another great statement of confident faith in v 13.  “I believe that I shall see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.”  To follow Jesus is not simply to hedge our bets for the afterlife.  To follow Jesus is to see God’s goodness in the land of the living – right here.  No matter our circumstances.  If God’s way-making footprints are hard to see, It doesn’t make the promise any less true.

The psalmist goes from I to You at the end of the song.  “Wait for the Lord; be strong and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord!” (v14) He’s with us.  He’s promised never to leave us or forsake us.  Thousands of years later we repeat the words – “The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?”   May such confidence and trust be our friends.  May God grant that this be true for us all.

Amen