“Just turn right after the railroad tracks.  You can’t miss it.”   Have you ever noticed how locals, especially east of the Rockies , make many assumptions in giving directions to lost motorists.  “Go past Johnson’s old farm to where the grocery store used to be.”  They forget about the fork in the road or the new traffic signal.  “You can’t miss it,” they insist.   They may not be able to miss it, we often do. 

Sometimes we move through life thinking we can’t miss it.  The next turn will be so obvious.  But how many times have we discovered, that we are completely lost and should have taken the other fork twenty miles, or years, back? 

Here in Psalm 27 we are given a very clear road map for our life.   From the psalmist’s heart we see how God provides encouragement and confidence for His people.   We also get to see how this deeply spiritual psalm is a prayer for help and sustenance for this journey.

The Psalmist, who in this case is David, begins by recalling three qualities of God:  light, salvation, and strength…important items for a journey. David goes deeper than just listing these qualities.  He claims them, and therefore, he claims God, for his own life’s journey.  And so David declares:  “The Lord is my light. “  In another Psalm David says, “Your word is a lamp unto my feet, and light unto my path (vs 105).”  This means God is the One who directs and guides.    David also declares: “The Lord is the strength of my life.”   We need strength for our journey – in this case, God’s strength. 

It is because of David’s faith in, and his experience with, God that he is able to declare with confidence and absolute certainty his own salvation in God.  You and I build on that as we come to God and declare that no other name can save us.   We see the clear evidence of God’s power all around us in the glory of His creation, His work in nature.    But nothing can compare to the beauty of the fairest of all, just like the hymn, “Fairest Lord Jesus”… Jesus Christ, who is the “Ruler of all nature, Lord of the Nations, the Son of God and the Son of Man.”  This is a timeless message, through the generations.  It is also a message for all ages – young people through old-sters.   There comes a time for each of us to declare that message for ourselves: God is my light, and my strength and my salvation.   You see, there needs to come a time when the faith we have is “not just my parents” faith, by my own.    In many churches confirmation classes inevitably mean to some of the youth “I have an in now,  so I no longer have to go to church.”  Here at MPC we look for and expect something very different.   When we teach the Youth New Member class the youth ask such good and faith producing questions.  We tell them this is the beginning of when the faith that has been but a seed, now grows deep for them to declare for their own.   Often we see that personal faith in Jesus comes with the marriage of our young people; or with the birth of children.  Sometimes there is a recommitment or first time declaration as the toddlers grow and begin to ask those “pithy” questions like:  How come mommy (or daddy) doesn’t come to church with us?  Or, How come we don’t go to church like Josie family does?  We want the children, youth, college age, singles, young marrieds, old marrieds – each of us to act on that faith and then to fearlessly declare that:  “God, through His resurrected Son, Jesus, is our light, our strength and our salvation. 

Here we see that David has a fearless faith in God.  He also knows he has enemies.    However, David has the confidence, I mentioned earlier, and the shelter of being in God’s grace.  Interesting that David portrays his enemies as an animal.  Perhaps he is having a flashback to when he was a shepherd, and was out in the fields guarding the sheep against dangerous animals.   Many of us have people or situations and circumstances in our lives who just can’t wait to declare war in some way, circle for the last time, pounce and devour us.   Because of our confidence in God we need not fear.   Because you and I have a resurrected Savior, He promises to be with us throughout those fearful times.   We are to declare Christ as our strength, help, hope and light during those times. 

And during all his difficult times David seeks God’s attention.  Now in seeking God’s attention, David certainly wants God’s instruction and guidance.   But at this particular point David declares the one and most important thing in his life.  He says, “One thing have I desired of the Lord.  To dwell in the Lord’s House all the days of my live…”  Later, in the New Testament, the Apostle Paul declares the same for his life in the letter to the church at Philipi:  “. . . but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.”    And Jesus, Himself, says something similar in Matt 6:33 – “Seek first the kingdom of God .”   You see, it is God’s very presence we are to seek.  And we are to seek that first.   David expresses his deep desire to seek and be with God as wanting to dwell in the house of the Lord always.  Now I doubt he wanted to snuggle down in his sleeping bag inside the tabernacle and stay there.  However, he does want the Ark of the Covenant, which was at that time, God’s meeting place with His people.  Actually David goes to great lengths to bring the Ark to Jerusalem and erect a tabernacle for it.  He also planned an elaborate temple for God. 

But more than the space and place there is a desire and longing or even a desperation which is an openness to God that David expresses.   Perhaps you know this heart’s longing for God in the midst of your life and church activities.  Just like David we are to open our selves, our hearts, to God in new ways, as well as the age old way of prayer.    In prayer, you and I seek God and have access to God through Christ.   Whether we write a psalm, or song, or poem or journal, play a musical instrument or a CD, or sit in silence we can rejoice, and be assured, that this is a way Jesus helps us to carve down everything in our   lives to the one most important point…Himself. 

It is because David knows this most important relationship in his life that he is able to declare God’s light and strength for himself in the midst of a very deep and immense pain. As some here today are intimately aware, few hurts are as deeply felt as the loss of parents.  The feelings of aloneness and abandonment are deep.   We believe that David has just escaped from King Saul who is determined to kill him.  David runs and hides in a cave along with his brothers and sisters and other relatives.  Apparently his parents are elderly and unable to seek refuge in that cave.  David leaves them in the care of the king of Moab .  This is risky because David cannot be certain that the king will not harm his parents.  David is probably concerned that he might never see his parents alive again. 

According to Jewish rabbinic tradition, the king of Moab does betray David’s trust and kills David’s parents.  If this is so, the lamenting of abandonment has a depth of emotion beyond what most of us might feel.  Nonetheless, there are times we do feel abandoned by those close to us.  This could be due to a death, a divorce, a betrayal, or someone moves away or some other situation that causes us to distrust people and to distrust God.   What these verses tell us is that in our times of trouble, in the face of our modern-day enemies – even if our closest friends and relatives – even if our mother or if our father, hurt or abandon, our secure, safe and best place to be is in God’s presence.   We need to remember that in our good moments as well as in our deepest moments of rejection, betrayal, isolation and loneliness God is still constantly and always present with us.

David is aware of God’s presence.  And He trusts God in that.  That is why David can wait on God’s leading for help and direction.  We, like David, are to wait on God’s leading  and guidance, not the world’s leading.  And that is why we are to pray like David:  “Teach me how to live; teach me your ways, O Lord.”   Our closing hymn, “Teach Me Thy Way, O Lord”  is also an prayer for God’s guidance and blessing.   For all this we need to have a teachable spirit and cheerful obedient heart.   And certainly we are to ask for guidance for which path to take, which direction to go.  However, we will know the right path and right direction when we wait on God; when we seek God’s attention and His way.  In this we seek God’s very heart.  

            You know, throughout our lives, we declare many things.  We declare bankruptcy.  We declare war.   Desperately we throw our arms in the air and declare our need for help.  Some of us have declared in many different ways that the one who is driving the car – that he is lost.  Many of us here declare love for another.   Because we are all David’s and we don’t want to miss this most important relationship, as we prepare our hearts to come to the Lord’s Table let us, I urge you to:

1)      Declare your confidence in the Lord…that He is your light and your strength and your salvation.(1-3)

2)      Declare your determination to serve and follow Him. (4-10)

Ask God to give you a teachable heart and spirit and help you obey Him and to realize His constant presence. (8-10)

3)      Declare your expectation that His goodness will be your aim. (11-14)