a very relevant one for the time that we're living in right now. And I pray that it's a help to you, not by what I say, but what God's word says tonight. I pray it'll be a divine help to you and that you'll be blessed from just the reading of this Psalm tonight, considering the circumstances and the conditions of the day that we're living in right now. So Psalm chapter 27 tonight, and we're gonna, I'm gonna read the whole Psalm to you, 20, 14 verses, and then we'll just, I'll take our time tonight and talk about and preach about this psalm a little bit. Psalm of David says, 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 I will 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. Hear, O Lord, when I cry with my voice. Have mercy also upon me and answer me. When thou saidst, seek ye my face, my heart said unto thee, thy face, Lord, will I seek. Hide 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 thy heart. Wait, I say, on the Lord. Everybody said. Our Heavenly Father, we thank you, Father, again for a time to come together in the middle of our week to set aside our cares and our concerns and our troubles and to worship you. And Father, we know that you are a spirit, and if we are to worship you appropriately, we have to worship you in spirit and in truth. Father, I do pray that that would be the atmosphere and the environment in this auditorium tonight, and that you would speak to our hearts from your Word. We're praying for your Holy Spirit to give us the wonderful gift of illumination to make the Word of God come alive in each and every soul that's here tonight under the sound of this preaching. And Father, also tonight, you would just speak to us in your word. Help us to know how to apply these things to our own walk with you, that we would be strengthened, that we would be encouraged, and that our fears would be allayed. We ask these things in Jesus' name. Amen. I think that you're very aware that one of the tools or one of the weapons that is used in our day to get the attention of any group or sect of people is that of fear. Fear is used as a way to put us into a position of cowering, of concern, of worrying, and of fretting. That's what fear does. You remember back when Al Gore accused George Bush of playing on our fears, he said. He said it very loudly and very adamantly back then. And we're seeing a very similar fear-mongering being pressed upon us, I believe, in the 21st century. And we have all kinds of different concerns and wonders of what's going to be next. You know, are we living in the new normal with the social distancing and the masking and now we have vaccine vaccines, no doubt on the horizon, but even vaccine mandates for various, you know, sex of people in various parts of the populace. I know right now it's a it's a hot button in the health care industry. And a lot of the health care workers who have been mandated to get a vaccine have left that industry or changing jobs, things of this nature. And we don't know how far it's going to go. And we don't know how much concern there ought to be. And we really don't, I don't know if we really know exactly what this vaccine does or doesn't do yet at this point. And so there's a lot of questions and a lot of concerns and a lot of a lot of fears that are going on in the world today. We have other things that we are fearful of, and we shouldn't be fearful as believers, but at times there's gonna be those moments, those seasons, those lapses of faith where we're gonna fall into a position or a place of fear. And Psalm 27 really takes us and allows us to kind of float between the idea of fear and of faith. And I hope that you'll see that tonight and it'll help you. It'll help strengthen your faith and it'll help you get over your fears and the things that God would have you to do as one of his dear children. We're going to just go through this in a few verse I mean verse by verse tonight and just talk about some things and I hope we can make some application that'll make sense to you and it will be a blessing and a help to you tonight. We know that David had all kinds of fears in his life because Saul who was the king really wanted nothing more in life than to see David dead and he pursued him with all of his strength and all of his vigor and they you know those who count these things and add these things up. So there were over 20 attempts on David's life by either Saul or Saul's men or those who had pledged their allegiance to King Saul. So David was on the run much of his life, but we wouldn't put David into the category of being a coward. or being one who lived in fear. We saw how brave he was when he went up against Goliath. He was the only one that was there that day that had the courage and the wherewithal to go and to stand before, as he said, this uncircumcised Philistine who dares defy the armies of the living God. You know, he was completely upset and obsessed by the fact that people were afraid of the giant of Gath. And so we know that David wasn't a fearful man, but yet fears will come. and fears will go. We have to learn how to put those fears into their proper place and to treat them with biblical respect. Amen, saints? Verse number one says, 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? It says, first of all, that the Lord is my light. And the Lord is my light. The moment that He saved my soul, He took me out of the kingdom of darkness, which was Satan's domain. It was the realm of the lost, the unwashed, the unregenerate, and He brought me into the kingdom of His marvelous light. Colossians 1, verse 13 says, "...who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son." And we know that all the things that are negative about the darkness and how men loved darkness because their deeds were evil and the habitations of cruelty are in the dark places, it says in Isaiah. There's a lot of bad things that happen in the darkness, but you and I, before our salvation, we were sometimes darkness too. We were in that kingdom of darkness under the power and the grip of darkness but then Jesus came into our life and Jesus is the light of the world isn't he Saints and he saved our souls and he took us out of the the grip or the grasp of darkness out of Satan's domain and he put us into the kingdom of his dear light and so we've been brought out out of darkness. And we know that that's our salvation experience. But also we know this because we have the light of the word, our path can be guided with the light of the word. Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path. And we're thankful for that, that we're not just stumbling and bumbling and rumbling through this world and not sure where we're going, not sure of the next step that we're going to take. Because the Word lights our way, and we need to have that light for our feet, that light before our path, especially the older we get. Amen. Yeah, sure. Those late-night wake-up calls are not any fun at all if there's no light to light our path. And all kinds of danger lurking out there in the dark recesses of our bedrooms when somebody says, Amen. Okay. So we're careful about those things. The Lord is our light. He's also our salvation. He is our salvation. He's the one who delivered us out of condemnation. To say this, to deliver, to set free, to take the captive out of bondage, to heal the bruised, to give sight to the blind, to take us again out of that sense of condemnation as it says in John chapter 5 and verse 24. Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation, but is passed from death unto life. That's another truth about the kingdom of darkness. The kingdom of darkness is a kingdom of death. It's a kingdom of death and destruction and damnation. There is no good thing that comes from that kingdom. We need to be pulled from that kingdom by our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and enter into everlasting life and to put a condemnation in the rear window. Romans 8, 1. There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after flesh, but after the Spirit." Aren't you glad there's no condemnation on your soul any longer? Somebody say amen. I know that's a hallelujah moment when I think about those things that I was once condemned. I was condemned already, Jesus said, but then I came to Him, I put my faith in Him, He saved my soul, and now condemnation is not a worry or a concern that a blood-bought believer has any longer. The Lord is our light, He is our salvation, and He's also our strength. When the Bible says that God is our strength, it's saying this, that those who are strong in Christ are unable to be defeated. Let's think about that for a second. You're unable to be defeated because of who you are in Christ. Maybe a better way to put it, is you're not able to stay defeated or in a state of sense of being defeated. Because I know that life comes at us, it gets heavy, it piles on sometimes, and it's no fun at all, and you feel very, very defeated. But we are not defeated because we belong to Christ Jesus What shall we say then Romans chapter 8 verse 31? What shall we say to these things if God before us who can be against us verse 37 nay in all these things we are more than Conquerors through him that loved us. There's no defeat for the Christian. We're on the winning side Amen, saints. You know, right now, you might feel defeated. Right now, you might want to throw in the towel. I've been there. I understand those things. But defeat is not a state of mind that is suited for a blood-bought child of God, because God is our light. God is our salvation and God is my strength. 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? So here's the question we have to ask ourselves tonight. You have to ask yourself introspectively, are my fears then valid? Are my fears valid? Are the things that I'm afraid of, are the things that get me all balled up inside and cause me to wring my hands and to fret and to pace the floor, are they valid or not? Now, we know this is true right here. For God hath not given us the spirit of fear." That's not God's gift to us, is it? His gift instead is of power, and of love, and of a sound mind. But it doesn't mean we're not going to have fears. It just means this, God isn't the one who gave us the fears. The fears are our own conjuring. They're from our own state of mind. And really, I believe this, the magnitude of our fears depends on how much we know about God and how real God is in our life. when God has become our light, when we recognize Him as our salvation, and we find our strength from Him. He's our resource for all those things, that it helps these fears be put to rest much more quickly, and of course, much more biblically. But here we are, we're living in the 21st century, the Bible's outdated. It must be outdated. It must be outdated because I know that you're going to the self-help books. And the psychology preachers? And Dr. Feelgood, huh? And Pastor Fluff and stuff, right? Dr. Warm and Fuzzy? Someone say amen! And you want to feel good about yourself? No! The Bible is still real, and the Bible is still true, and the Bible is still sharper than any two at the sword. And so we have no business, and it makes no sense to look anywhere else for a source of light. or deliverance, or strength and encouragement in this world today. This is the best source for all those things, all of the time, 24-7, for a blood-bought child of God. And so we have to remember these things are going to come into our lives. There's gonna be fears, there's gonna be questions, there's gonna be turmoil, but we have to be able to give these things over to God, and remember that He is our light, our salvation, and our strength. The enemy that David faced was very real. The enemies that you and I face are very real most of the time. Verses 2 and 3. When the wicked, even my enemies and my foes, came upon me to eat up my flesh, they stumbled and fell. Now this enemy was a very menacing, very mean intent enemy. They wanted to kill David. That's what it means to eat up his flesh. They wanted to extinguish his life. But when they came upon him, they stumbled and they fell. They didn't have any success in taking him down or taking him out. They had no success at all in keeping him down. Verse 3 says about the enemy, Though an host should encamp against me. A host means this, a whole lot. So not only was the enemy mean, the enemy was many. There was a whole bunch of people, a whole bunch of men and women in the nation of Israel and really worldwide at that time who wanted to see David fall and taken out of this life. Though a host should encamp against me, my heart shall not fear. Though war should rise against me, in this will I be confident." That's a very important phrase right there, the last part of verse number three. In this will I be confident. I believe this, after studying out, praying over it, I'm going to present it now like this. Number one, David was confident in this. There's always going to be an enemy. If you are a child of God and a lover of God, there's always going to be somebody who's against you, who wants to persecute you, who wants to accuse you, who wants to see you fall and to fail and everything else. The enemy absolutely is real. It's a reality that we all have to come to grips with. But the other thing that David had confidence in was this, that the Lord is my light and my salvation and my strength. I have no reason to fear this very real enemy. And so keep that in mind as we're going to continue on now through the rest of this psalm. As you come into verse number 4, there's a turn here. in the tenor and the tone, because David's going to start talking about his relationship with God. Not just who God is, but how well David knows the Lord God of heaven. One thing, he says, one thing have I desired of the Lord that I will seek after. This is going to be my one pursuit, my one spiritual pursuit, that I'm going to put all of my energy into, all of my spiritual existence into, all of my fabric as a believer into. This one thing, when I am fearful, I'm going to go after this with all of my heart, all of my might, and all of my soul, 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." When something is called beautiful, we say this in our country, that beauty is in the eye of the who, saints? In the beholder. Well, when you put beauty in the eye of the beholder, that really changes your whole view of heaven, and it really messes with your theology, if you'll just bear with me for a minute. Because I remember, in fifth grade, me. We had to do art projects, okay? And we had to present them to our parents at Christmas time. And I made a Christmas ornament out of clay, okay? And in my mind, I was going to present my mother with this beautiful golden bell Christmas tree ornament. And so I did all the things that my art teacher told me to do. The only thing that worked out okay was that she gave me a cookie cutter to get the bell shape right. Because after that, I mean, it went off the rails real quick. Can I have an amen, please? So, it's funny because she just sent it to me about, earlier this year she sent me this craft back, I was thinking like, so you really didn't like it, did you mom? But anyway, she sent it back to me and I saw this hideous thing, okay? It felt like it weighed four pounds, okay? It was pale yellow, puke orange, with a gray shadow. I was trying to make it look 3D, you know, and I am not an artist. Those of you who know me, I mean, that's way beyond my skill set, amen? And I thought to myself, I'm going to present this to my mother for Christmas, and she opened it, and she said, oh, Mark, it's beautiful, I love it. She put it around the tree. Well, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, right? I knew it wasn't beautiful. I don't have to show you a picture to tell you. You know it wasn't beautiful. But mom said it was beautiful, right? Now, if we take beauty out of the eye of the beholder and put beauty in the hands of the Creator, that's a whole new theology, isn't it? Kathy and I got to go up, as you know, to the North Rim for our anniversary trip. We got to behold the beauty of the Lord in His creation. I love the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. I do. It's a different view. There's a lot more, there's a lot different access than the South Rim has. There's a lot less people than the South Rim has. And we got out there, I got out there at sunrise and just saw some beautiful colors of just a clear canyon and just loved it. And I never think about this as some big crack in the earth or as some people call it the big ditch in Arizona. No, this thing is beautiful. God created this with his hand and he spoke this into existence because it's God's. And then, you know, you saw the pictures on Instagram, whatever. Then we got to go out on a clear-ish night and take pictures of the Milky Way, the core of the galaxy, as they call it. It's absolutely amazing. And Kathy was just saying, look at all the stars. And I said, yeah, and this is just a sliver of the stars of the entire universe, and we can't even begin to imagine and to count. And God knoweth the number of the stars, and He telleth them by name. Amen. And so you take your eyes off what you think is beautiful by the beholder, And you transition all that beauty to the great God of heaven and say, wow, everything that He has done is beautiful. Everything that He beholds is beautiful. So instead of me looking at my trials, looking at my troubles, wondering, the answer to the question about a vaccine or about a virus or about a mandate or a political ideology, it pales in comparison to the beauty of Jehovah God of heaven. Somebody say amen. Oh, absolutely. David said, I'm afraid right now and there's one thing I want to do. I want to go into the house of the Lord and I want to behold His beauty forever. I just want to fix my gaze and my soul's gaze upon Him and let all these other things start to to go aside, because I know this, David knows this, you know this, that all those troubles, all those concerns, all those worries, all those things we've fed over are eventually going to fade off out of existence, but the beauty of God will stand forever and ever and ever. Amen. I want to be with God all the time, he says. That's a state of mind. It's a posture of our soul. It's the meditation of our heart to focus on God all the time. You know what my answer is. I just don't watch the news. That's the way that I do it. And you can do what you want to do. I'm not going to come down on you for watching the news, but I just don't do it because I think that life is rough enough without somebody lying to me 24-7, somebody say amen, trying to scare me and doing other things. So I need to fix my gaze upon the beauty of God, not the ugliness of society, not the ugliness of my enemy, not the ugliness of my circumstances, when we focus on way too many things that aren't nearly as beautiful as the great God of heaven. Way too many things. I could go down and make a list tonight, but I don't want to offend anybody. I fear I already have. Amen. Let my water go. One thing. Could you do that one thing? Could you do that one thing? Instead of worrying, instead of fretting, hey, instead of putting your rant on Facebook, could you do that one thing? Are you hearing me or not? Just that one thing. Next verse. For in the time of trouble, he shall hide me in his pavilion. Now, I gotta tell you, I always thought of a pavilion like a tent canopy. You know, when we had Fourth of July as a kid, there was pavilions all over the place. And pavilions where you went to get a churro or a snow cone. Somebody say amen. That was a big deal for a child back then. But a pavilion, when you look the word up and study it out, it's like a thicket. It's intertwined branches and twigs. It's like the places where rabbits hide. I remember rabbit hunting when I was young. I had a friend who was a rabbit hunter. Then later on, my father-in-law one time rabbit hunting. I had no idea how dumb it was for a son-in-law to go hunting with his father-in-law. Somebody say that. But I came back alive. I'm still here to tell a story. But we went rabbit hunting. And the one friend of mine had beagles. And beagles, you know, the beagle's nature is to always have its nose to the ground because it's trying to pick up a scent of a rabbit. And you come upon a thicket, and those beagles will run into that thicket, and you'll see 10 or 12 rabbits come out of that thicket, you know, and come bounding out. You've got to be ready. to take them out and things of that nature, because they're hiding in that thicket. And sometimes, if you look in there real carefully, you might see their little golden eye or something like that, if the light catches it just right, but they're hiding in that thicket. It's a very safe and secure place for them. I got to tell you a story, it has nothing to do with the message, but I had a friend of mine in Missouri, he had a beagle, he named him Elvis. Because he said, he ain't never caught a rabbit and he ain't no friend of mine, he said. That's what he said about his beagle. But anyway, that was free tonight. You can take it or you can leave it, amen? Thank you very much. A pavilion is a thicket, and David said this, God's going to put me in His thicket. We sang tonight that He hideth my soul in the cleft of the rock. You know, while the storm passes over, let me stand in the hollow of your hand. We sang those songs for a reason, because God does hide us in the height of trouble, especially when we focus on His beauty, especially when we stop focusing on the the ugliness of the enemy and the ugliness of society and all the things that are going on, and really focus in and hone in on the beauty and on the majesty of God. And he says this, in the secret of His tabernacle shall He hide me. the secret of His tabernacle. That's the place that only you and God know about. That's your secret place. You, as the individual believer, Jesus called it a prayer closet in the New Testament. It's the place where you go to get along with God. It's the things that you do when you want to begin thinking about and meditating on God and getting your soul in that right posture to meet with God. He'll put me in that secret tabernacle. He'll hide me in that place. He shall set me up upon a rock." Wow. When God pulls us out of the fray, He wants us to live above the fray. The fray wants to pull you down with it. The fray wants you to give in to the pressure and to give in to the cause and all the greater good and all those things. God says, no, no, no, no, no. I've already hid you in a pavilion. We've been in the secret place together. Now I'm gonna put you on the solid rock. I'm gonna lift up your head, verse number nine, and now shall my head be lifted up above my enemies round about me. Therefore will I offer in his tabernacle Sacrifices of what Saints of joy. I will sing. Yay. I will sing praises unto the Lord He delivered me again. He encouraged me again. He showed me that he was real again I was I enjoyed a brother a penny's testimonies about how a He asked God to prove himself real to him, and God has proved himself real to him time and time again. That's the kind of God that we serve. That's the God that you and I have the privilege of knowing and worshiping in spirit and in truth. Amen, saints. Now, David's going to break into a prayer. a prayer to make sure that he has his heart right and his gaze fixed where it needs to be when trouble comes his way. Hear, O Lord, when I cry with my voice. Have mercy also upon me and answer me. Why would David say something like that to God? Why would he say, Don't hide your face from me. Why would he say, don't put me away in anger, don't turn your back on me in anger. You've been my help, leave me not, neither forsake me, oh God of my salvation. Let me tell you why David said this. The same reason that you and I ought to say this, is because that he's human and he knows he's gonna do it again. Yep. He's going to be afraid again. He's going to be on the run again. You're going to commit that sin again. You're going to wring your hands again. You're going to pace the floor again. You're going to play the what-if game until you go into a wild frenzy again and again and again. God is merciful and God is gracious. Amen. To us sinners, aren't you glad of that? And time and time again, He forgives us and says, okay, come back up here out of the fray. I'm going to put you on the rock again. Look at me. Come out of the fray, on the rock, look at me. But your fears and your habits and the things you find beautiful are gonna distract you and draw you away time and time again. He recognized this, that family is not forever. When my father and my mother forsake me, then the Lord will take me up. Either mom and dad are not going to be able to come through when he's having trouble, or they're going to pass off into eternity. It doesn't really matter. It's not forever. Only God is forever. Only God is ultimately faithful. Everybody said, Amen. Teach me thy way, O Lord, and lead me... What kind of path, saints? A plain path, because of mine enemies. I need a plain path. I need open doors. Really, Lord, I need one open door. I don't need a choice right now. I don't think I'd make the right choice. We were in the Navy, there was a saying that they had, when we were qualifying, somebody who was qualified to ask you a question, they would give you a 50-50 chance, either A or B. They said this, it's a 50-50 question, but the stats are 50-50-90. What they meant was this, 90% of the time, the non-qualified are going to get the wrong answer because they're going to make the wrong choice. And the same thing is true in the Christian life. A lot of times when we're given two choices, we make the wrong choice time and time again because we're putting beauty and stock in the wrong things, that we're trusting in experience or family values or morality or ethics, whatever the case may be, and we haven't learned to fully put our trust in God. And so, teach me thy way, O Lord, and lead me in a plain path. Give me one open door. Show me the way to go. The steps of the good Lord are ordered by the Lord. Order my steps in thy word. The psalmist also said, I need a plain path. I need open doors, no stumbling blocks, no detours, no delays. I don't need hurdles. I don't need hills. I need help. Make it plain. Make it easy to understand. Aren't you glad? for the easy way that God made His Word to be understood. He gave us the gift of His Holy Spirit. He gives us that beautiful privilege of illumination. The Word of God gets turned on by His light in our hearts. It guides us. It directs us. It leads us in the paths of everlasting. That's what God does. Keep the pathway plain. Keep the pathway clear. Where was I? Teach me thy way, O Lord, and lead me in a plain path, because of mine enemies. Verse 12, real quick. Deliver me not over unto the will of mine enemies, for false witnesses are risen up against me, and such as breathe out cruelty. Watch this, saints. I had fainted unless I had believed. You can stop right there for a second. If I had not believed in you, I would not be here today. By the grace of God, I am what I am. I had fainted unless I had believed to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. I would not be where I am today if it were not for your goodness, Lord. I would have fainted. I would have thrown in the towel. I would have given up. I would have quit. The enemy would have overcome me. My life, as I know it, would be over. I would have had nowhere to go. I would have thrown up my hands. I have nowhere to go. I don't know what I'm going to do any longer. But instead, I put my trust and faith in God and God alone. I saw His beauty. He hid me in the pavilion. He put me in the secret place. He put me up out of the fray and set me on a solid rock. And once again, He established my goings and said, Mark Hoffer, we're going this way. Amen. And how can two walk together except they be agreed? and the last admonition from the psalmist, and the last admonition from the great God of heaven, and the last admonition from your pastor tonight is this, wait on the Lord. be of good courage, and he shall strengthen mine heart. Wait, I say, on the Lord." Because courage and strength will come from Him. And your fears being put aside and your uncertainties being allayed will only be done by the great God of heaven, and we cannot get ahead of Him. Nothing good ever comes from getting out in front of God. Can I have an amen, please? Keep those things in mind as the fears and the doubts assail us time and time again as God's dear children. Everybody sit. Father, we thank you for this time together tonight. Thank you for the Word of God. Lord, thank you for its relevance today.