I shall not be moved.  This psalm doesn’t use those words, yet that’s the sense of this song of praise.  If God is for us—and He is—who can successfully be against us?  God is my strong salvation, no little salvation stand-in such as people look to: food, booze, drugs, fornications of every shade, money, cars, the internet, travel—I’m only truly alive when I’m in France!  I’ll fly away is not an advertisement for any airline.

“The Lord is my light and my salvation” (27:1).  No salvation without light.  And where there is light, true light, there also is salvation, true salvation.  But how can you and I tell true light from false?  By the Spirit, whispering to us, redirecting us, speaking to us, strongly, suddenly, as we read the Bible, or as we pray, as we’re driving to work or cooking dinner, or laying down to rest and sleep after a day.  The Spirit always reminding us, so blessedly, so needfully that “The Lord is the stronghold of my life” (27:1).  He holds our lives in His strength.  Our refuge.  Our peace.  Our comfort.  Our hope.  Of what shall we be afraid?

Plenty, it seems!  If our responses are any indication, the reactions we see around us in these times.  The light seems dim and salvation far away!  We are to live by faith, yet it seems sometimes as if we live by worry, live for worry, knowing that’s no way to live, no way to Life, but someway unable to stop ourselves.  Jesus says don’t worry; we worry about that, too.  There’s so much to worry about, so much out of our hands, beyond our control.  Is worry what we feel when we can’t control something, or someone?  We know the worry makes us weary, but all our wise knowing can’t master the feeling.  The head should rule the heart!  Perhaps.  As it happens, the heart rules the head.  It matters, then, who is enthroned upon that heart, really enthroned, there.

Wisdom, beloved, is not in our knowing, but in being known.  Wisdom is in patience, in hope, in faith.  We know there’s plenty out there to devour us: fear, disease, greed, anger, lust—all that panoply of sin, turning our attention, our focus from the true, living God, beckoning our hearts to profitless pursuits.  The heart is the problem, the unguarded heart.  The enemy won’t attack us through our heads but our hearts.  God’s Word guards the heart, arms and armors the heart, even as it changes the heart, cleanses, renews and strengthens the heart for life with God.  God arranges and assigns plenty of strength training!

David, an imperfect man by any measure, knows God who guards the heart.  We may think of David as, among other things, a brave man.  He tells us his courage is not from himself; he does not depend upon himself for it: “Though an army besiege me, / my heart will not fear; though war break out against me, / even then I will be confident” (27:3).  How?  Because he is not relying upon himself!  He knows the one upon whom he relies.  He knows God is faithful.

Confidence.  Anyone besides me sometimes feel the lack of it?  If I only had confidence!  What is confidence?  Not worrying?  Optimism?  The conviction of the effectiveness of one’s own personality, one’s own power of persuasion?  No.  Confidence is doing things from faith, living with faith.  The outcome is not in our hands—whether we experience victory or failure, God is turning it all to blessing for us.  This wisdom of the Spirit is wonderfully liberating!  Trust God and move.  I know it can be difficult, feel difficult.  If it’s not in my hands, it’s out of control!

David tells us another thing that helps us to know him better and our own hearts.  David was surely a man with dreams and ambition, who sought glory, not for himself, as many thought, but for God.  David didn’t always live up to his highest, best aspiration: that’s why he is an example of hope!  David may have lost confidence in himself, many times, but he never lost confidence in God.  David’s highest, best aspiration was always the same: “One thing I ask from the Lord, / this only do I seek: / that I may dwell in the house of the Lord / all the days of my life, / to gaze on the beauty of the Lord / and to seek him in his temple” (27:4).  We might think of the twenty-third psalm, just there.  David wanted to build a temple for the Lord; God sent His prophet Nathan to tell David that wasn’t going to happen.  Is David talking about the Tent of Meeting then, from days of old, the days of Moses?  What is this house of the Lord of which David sings?

What makes any place a house of the Lord, beloved?  Where the Spirit of the Lord is.  David longs to be in the presence of the Lord, and he knows he can be in God’s presence only by the Spirit.  David longs for the Spirit of the Lord.  The Spirit reveals the beauties and excellences of the Lord.  Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is the Temple of God, and we know that our bodies are now temples of the Lord, because of the indwelling Spirit.  Where is God?  Among other places, He is with you.  Let Him open the eyes of your heart to His presence; let Him open your heart to His grace and your eyes to His glory.  We, too, “will sing and make music to the Lord” (27:5), singing our confidence, singing I shall not be moved.

We want that, that feeling of confidence, but brothers and sisters, confidence is not a feeling, not an emotion, but a conviction of the heart.  Confidence is a fact of faith, the conviction of the heart that acts with faith.  When we act with faith, we enact our reliance upon God, we live into our reliance upon God.  This living with faith is the most glorious and the hardest lesson for any of us to learn in this life.  It’s no easier for me than for you.  You may think to yourself, now and again, well, pastor is mostly preaching to himself, and, now and again, you may mostly be right.  However, the Word we all need is the very Word I need.

Weary, worried, and worn.  That’s where we are, more often than we’d like to admit.  David knew all about it.  He sings to God so loudly as often from tiredness as from exaltation.  Oh, “be merciful to me and answer me” (27:7) is a cry of the weary.  What does David’s heart, that seat of the Holy Spirit, say to David, then?  “Seek his face!” (27:8): seek God—has David lost God?  Can God not be found, God who dwells within us?  God is there, always, and we let darkness overawe us; we allow fear to push us around; we let worry stomp all over us.  We take our eyes off of God, off of Jesus, we turn from his wonderful face, and the things of this world grow terrifyingly large!

All the more when we plunge into the things of this world: seek them, desire them, offer them, oh, just a little worship—nothing big, of course, nothing really serious.  Not that we do that.  Not that we allow ourselves to become absorbed with the things of this life: career, advancement, achievement, accumulation, profit, pleasure, politics, more, newer, better.  We can sometimes even use these words for our faith walk—we get so confused and it all starts blending together.  And who profits from that?  Who profits from our confusion?

With David, we may even cry out, “Do not hide your face from me, / do not turn your servant away in anger; / you have been my helper. / Do not reject me or forsake me, / God my Savior. / Though my father and mother forsake me, / the Lord will receive me” (27:9-10).  We may never have felt rejected by the Lord, or forsaken, but permit me to take a little pin of God’s Word and deflate our balloons, lest I and you convince ourselves that God is pleased with us.  God is not pleased with us.  God is disappointed in all of us, and most assuredly I include myself!

Beloved, the Good News is not that God is pleased with us, as though you and I were so very pleasing to God, just as pleasing to Him as we are pleased with ourselves.  The Good News is that God in His disappointment makes the way for Him to be pleased with us as we are in Christ Jesus, with whom God is perfectly, eternally pleased.  In the world we have confusion, in God, confidence.

So far is God from turning His face from us in anger, that He sends His very face, Jesus Christ, our helper, our Savior.  Jesus Christ is God’s acceptance of us—you, me, all who receive Him.  Jesus speaks of forsaking father and mother, even of hating father and mother (Lk 14:26, Lk 9:59-62), and that’s hard to hear for those who love our parents dearly.  Jesus is saying that he is to be our first priority, our first loyalty and devotion, even more than our earthly parents.  I also believe I’m hearing him say that we are to forsake the flesh, the ways of this fallen, broken world, ways constantly begetting, conceiving, and bearing sin in us.  To turn to the Lord is to be forsaken by these parents of disobedience; those forsaken by these parents of disobedience find welcome in the arms of God in Jesus Christ: come to me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

Rest.  Maybe that’s what many of us are seeking, what our bodies, minds, hearts, and souls cry out for.  Rest.  Where can it be found?  How can it be acquired?  Who can give it?  Be still, my soul.  The Lord is on your side.  Breathe.  Pause.  Pray.  Seek.  Wait.  “Teach me your way, Lord; / lead me in a straight path / because of my oppressors” (27:11).  God’s way is the way of victory against all oppressors.  You and I might have little acquaintance with oppressive people, but we are well acquainted with oppressive things in our lives: the weight that presses down, so hard, sometimes, upon our souls.  Remember, there is hope.  There is a way.  As you remember—which is God at work in you helping you, causing you to remember—sing with David: “I remain confident of this: / I will see the goodness of the Lord / in the land of the living. / Wait for the Lord; / be strong and take heart / and wait for the Lord” (27:13-14).

Now to the One who by the power at work within us is able to do far more abundantly than all we can ask or imagine, to God be glory in the Church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever.