The Joy of Trusting in God
While sitting in the dentist’s office in December I was perusing a magazine and saw the following statistic: “Percentage of Roman Catholics who knew Genesis was the first book in the Bible: 41%. Percentage of Atheists and Agnostics who knew: 72 %.” I don’t mean to pick on our Roman Catholic friends in relaying that bit of news. The article didn’t say how many Baptists knew the first book in the Bible. The thought struck me, however, that there are chapters in the Bible every Christian should know. Genesis 1 and the description of creation would be one of them. As I thought about it more I decided I would do a little series on some of the great chapters in the Bible that a Christian should be aware of and at least have some familiarity with for our own spiritual journey. There are far more than four significant chapters, but I only needed four in January so I chose two chapters from the Old Testament and two from the New Testament: Psalm 27, Isaiah 40, Matthew 5, and Romans 8. I’m not saying these are the four best chapters in the whole Bible, just that they are significant in what they teach.
January 8, 2012
Psalm 27, The Joy of Trusting in God
Doug Scalise, Brewster Baptist Church
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Before I share Psalm 27, here is a little background. The Book of Psalms is unique among the books of the Bible because there is a sense in which it is not only God’s word to us, but it is the words of people to God. Like the Lord’s Prayer, the Psalms model for us how to pray and in them we see people bringing every imaginable emotion to God. The psalms are poetry and songs expressing deep longings and pain, as well as praise and trust. There are at least ten different types of psalms, but the two most common types are laments and songs of praise. This reflects the truth we’re more likely to call out to God when we’re overflowing with thankfulness and gratitude or when life is really tough so it shouldn’t be a surprise that more psalms, about a third of the book, are classified as laments than any other type (for example, Psalms 3, 12, 13, 22, 31, 39, 57, 80, 85, 88, 90, 94, and 137). There are individual laments and community laments and they are expressed as grievances or complaints against God and or an enemy. A lot of songs that we might call “the blues” that sing about the trouble someone is in are like the psalms of lament.
As much as we feel life is stressful for us, stress is not unique to our lifetime. People in the past also had to deal with wars, diseases and epidemics, the death of children, constant dental and medical problems, and a host of other hardships. It’s like the poster of the classic painting of Daniel in the Lion’s Den with the caption, “Contrary to conventional wisdom, stress is not a 21st century phenomenon.” The psalms reflect a variety of difficult and stressful life situations that are threatening and disturbing and even cause people to question God or their faith. 117 Psalms have titles or superscriptions. Among these 72 are attributed to or dedicated to David and 13 refer to specific historical events in David’s life. David, the King of Israel, knew about trouble and stress. As a teenager, he defended himself against lions and bears and goliath sized opponents. As a young married man he fled for his life to escape the murderous intentions of his father-in-law Saul. Later in life he had to escape from one of his sons, Absalom who sought to seize the leadership of the country and who eventually was killed for his treason. David experienced the personal failure of betraying a loyal officer and having an affair with his wife, and ordering the death of the officer to cover his own sin. The baby born to David and Bathsheba died. David was familiar with stress, but he also knew where to turn in tough times.
Psalm 27 is a prayer and song about The Joy of Trusting in God. It begins with words of faith and confidence.
“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?
When evildoers assail me to devour my flesh—
my adversaries and foes— they shall stumble and fall.
Though an army encamp against me, my heart shall not fear;
though war rise up against me, yet I will be confident.
One thing I asked of the Lord, that will I 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. For he will hide me in his shelter in the day of trouble;
he will conceal me under the cover of his tent; he will set me high on a rock.
Now my head is lifted up above my enemies all around me, and I will offer in his tent sacrifices with shouts of joy; I will sing and make melody to the Lord.
Hear, O Lord, when I cry aloud, be gracious to me and answer me!
“Come,” my heart says, “seek his face!” Your face, Lord, do I seek.
Do not hide your face from me.
Do not turn your servant away in anger, you who have been my help.
Do not cast me off, do not forsake me, O God of my salvation!
If my father and mother forsake me, the Lord will take me up.
Teach me your way, O Lord, and lead me on a level path because of my enemies. Do not give me up to the will of my adversaries,
for false witnesses have risen against me, and they are breathing out violence.
I believe that I shall see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.
Wait for the Lord; be strong, & let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord!”
Psalm 27 is a favorite of mine and of many people because it eloquently and poignantly expresses a central focus of biblical faith, the joy of trusting in God in all circumstances. Psalm 27:1-6 is very similar to Psalm 23 and expresses fearless trust in God which enables David to the face the present and future calmly regardless of many threats. These words are spoken by someone who has faced a lot of hardships and received the Lord’s help.
All of us face situations and circumstances in life that might cause us to be fearful or afraid. You know what they are for you right now. Psalm 27 describes how God blesses those who put their hope and trust in the Lord. God is our light, salvation, and stronghold, the source of our confidence, the one who lifts us up and protects us and never leaves us. For David trusting God and remaining confident in the face of enemies, adversaries, and foes was truly a matter of life and death. One thing that stands out to me about Psalm 27 is that it pleads with God FIVE times DO NOT. Because David’s relationship with God is so important to him all of the things David does not want to happen are related to changing his relationship with the Lord for the worse.
DO NOT hide your face from me. To “hide the face” is to turn it away with displeasure, as if we would not look on a person who has offended us. Even today when folks are mad at someone, sometimes we might look away or turn our back and “hide our face.” This is a contrast to someone smiling at us in a friendly way. The favor or blessing of God is described in the Bible perhaps most famously in the blessing of Aaron, “May the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you, and may the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.”
DO NOT turn your servant away in anger, you who have been my help. Can you imagine being in the midst of something difficult and going to God about it and feeling like God turned you away? That hurts. It would be like going to the church on Sunday morning for worship and finding the building locked and a “closed” sign on the door. Again, people can act this way, someone may want to talk to us or us to them and the overture is rejected out of anger which only makes the damage to the relationship worse. In days that are past God has been his help. This is the reason why he prays and trusts that God will come to his aid once again.
DO NOT cast me off. There is a TV series called Survivor where participants get voted “off” the island where they are competing. When someone is voted off his or her torch is extinguished and turned in and they have to leave immediately. There is a painful break and the person walks away into the darkness, cast off, alone. That is what we don’t want to feel with God and this is what David is pleading.
DO NOT forsake me. Forsake means, “to withdraw companionship, protection, or support from somebody.” While some of these Do Not phrases are different ways of saying similar things, what makes being forsaken so painful is that there was companionship, protection, or support in the past and now it has been taken away.
DO NOT give me up to the will of my adversaries. The one thing David was most afraid of was feeling forsaken or abandoned by God. As long as he felt God’s presence and protection, it gave him courage to overcome his fear of other people and their threats.
Norman Vincent Peale wrote, “What words they are: hope, courage, fear! Two of them make life wonderful. One of them blights human existence. How many people have we seen across many years who have suffered from unresolved fear. But, then, also how many have found release and relief through hope and courage. All three of these are mental attitudes that result from the thoughts we think. The mental climate a person creates determines whether he shall have hope even when things seem hopeless, have courage even when apprehensive factors appear, or live in fear because of hopelessness and apprehension. Fear is only the second most powerful force in the personality. One is stronger, very much stronger. And that more powerful force is faith.”
When it comes to whether we will trust God or not, Henri Nouwen wrote about the importance of the choices we make and how they shape whether we will live in hope and courage in the present or live stuck in the past or fear. He said, “You are constantly facing choices. The question is whether you choose for God or for your own doubting self. You know what the right choice is, but your emotions, passions, and feelings keep suggesting you chose the self-rejecting way. The root choice is to trust at all times that God is with you and will give you what you need. Your self-rejecting emotions might say, “It isn’t going to work. I’m still suffering the same anguish I did six months ago. I will probably fall back into the old depressive patterns of acting and reacting. I haven’t really changed.” And on and on. It is hard not to listen to these voices. Still, you know that these are not God’s voice. God says to you, “I love you, I am with you, I want to see you come close to Me and experience the joy and peace of My presence. I want to give you a new heart and a new spirit. I want you to speak with My mouth, see with My eyes, hear with My ears, touch with My hands. All that is Mine is yours. Just trust Me and let me be your God.”
This is the voice to listen to. And that listening requires a real choice, not just once in a while but every moment of each day and night. It is you who decides what you think, say, and do. You always have a choice to think, speak, and act in the name of God and so move toward the Light, the Truth, and the Life. Your future depends on how you decide to remember your past. As you keep choosing (to trust) God, your emotions will gradually give up their rebellion and be converted to the truth in you. You are facing a real spiritual battle. But do not be afraid. You are not alone. Remember, you are held safe. You are loved. You are protected. You are in communion with God and with those whom God has sent you. What is of God will last. It belongs to the eternal life. Choose it, and it will be yours.”
As Christians, we call the Lord our light and salvation and the stronghold of our life because of the deliverance from sin and death given in Jesus. The three Old Testament books quoted most frequently in the New Testament are Deuteronomy, Isaiah and Psalms. When Jesus was on the cross, he quoted the first verse of Psalm 22, a lament. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Read that psalm in its entirety and you will see how it describes both Jesus’ experience on the cross and the impact of God delivering Jesus from death (Psalm 22:27), “All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord; and all the families of the nations shall worship before you.”
I pray that God will help us all each and every day to trust the Lord in the midst of our troubles, tests, trials, and temptations.
A great preacher of the 19th century, Phillips Brooks put it this way,
“Do not pray for easy lives; pray to be stronger people!
Do not pray for tasks equal to your power; pray for power equal to your tasks.
Then the doing of your work shall be no miracle, but you shall be a miracle. Every day you shall wonder at yourself, at the richness of life which has come to you by the grace of God.”
Blessing: “Comforted and inspired beyond all fear,
Not faltering at God’s command, Learning and increasing from our sorrow
God’s light illuminating our darkness
Let us boldly face the future, come what may.”
Adapted from Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison