Confident Faith

Confident Faith

Psalm 27

In his novel, Rabbit Is Rich, John Updike has a marvelous expression in which he characterizes
religious language as "the words of the dead."
The Psalms are the words of the dead -- words which have power and authority; words which speak
to the heart long after their original speakers are gone.
Rabbit says, at one point, "Laugh at ministers all you want; they have the words we need to hear
-- the ones the dead have spoken
."

The Psalms are a significant resource for the life of faith.
Generation after generation of faithful women and men have found their own voices in the Psalms
and have heard the voice of God.
The Psalms are a dialogue -- they express both sides of the conversation between the people of God
and the God who desires to live in communion with people.
The Psalms are the voice of the people and the sovereign response of God.
Utilized to help us honestly find our description of our reality, they can bring our whole life
under the care of God.

John Calvin called the Psalms an "anatomy of the soul."
The Psalms express all of the emotions, which people can experience in their life with God.
The language used runs the entire gamut from loud joyful praise to quiet intimate love,
from deep doubt to the height of faith, from unspeakable anger to desperate longing,
from overwhelming moral guilt to gentle comfort, from troublesome worries to great relief.
The Psalms articulate the goodness of life, celebrate the delightful aspects of creation,
speak of God's reliability, and praise the sensibility of God's moral law.

The 150 Psalms also have speech which evocatively describes rage, resentment, self-pity, suffering,
a life in disarray -- the abrasive experience of being disoriented, of life that is sometimes unstable,
confusing, and all too transient.
What goes on in the Psalms is peculiarly in touch with what goes on in our lives.

Bureggemann also says: "[The dead] do vote in the Psalms; they vote for faith, but in voting for faith
they vote for candor, for pain, for passion -- and finally joy. Their persistent voting gives us a word
that turns out to be the word of life
."

Psalm 27:1,3,5 reads: "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?
Though an army encamp against me, my heart shall not fear; though war rise up against me,
yet I will be confident!
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
."

At 7:37 a.m. on December 1, 1997, Mike Carneal arrived at his high school where a prayer meeting
was occurring.
About thirty-five students were singing songs, holding hands, saying prayers.
When they said "Amen," Mike pulled out a gun and began shooting.
Nicole Hadley, a popular fourteen year old freshman basketball player, took a bullet,
crumpled to the floor, and later died.
Mike pulled the trigger ten more times, hitting several students -- seriously wounding some,
and murdering two others.

Senior Ben Strong, leader of the school prayer service, kept yelling:
"Mike, what are you doing? Put the gun down!"

Just as Mike took aim at the school principal, Ben stepped in front of Mike and demanded that he stop - he did!
Ben Strong is a young man of great courage.
He would say he was just an ordinary person with great faith in God.
Asked about his reactions during the moments of the shooting, Ben Strong says "that he was just reacting.'"
"You don't know why stuff like this happens, but it does.
And you can't really do anything to change that.
You can change how you react to it, but you can't change the past
."

You can change how you react.
This is the lesson of Psalm 27 -- you can face life with trust instead of trepidation.

Charles Spurgeon once declared: "A little faith will bring your soul to heaven;
a great faith will bring heaven to your soul
."

In the interview, Ben Strong says that his faith was made stronger through this tragedy:
"God is the only one who got us through this.
God is always there for us, no matter what.
If I wasn't a Christian, I don't know how I would react to something like this.
It would be easy to just go nuts.
But when you have God in your life, something like this forces you to lean on him even more
."

Why do you believe?
Why do you trust in a God you cannot see?
What keeps you coming back to your faith - in spite of doubts, in spite of horrible events that happen
in the world or in your own life, in spite of your pain?

Perhaps your experience is similar to that of the writer of Psalm 27.
Psalm 27 begins with confidence.
It is a confidence and trust, even as there is a review of various, unspecified threats:
enemies, war, slanderers.
As we pray this Psalm, we can fill in the general language about armies descending around us
with the specifics of our life circumstances:

Confidence is expressed that God can meet any challenge -- that the Lord will prevail
against any and all threats.
Prior experience with God and the present relationship with God make the Psalmist trusting
about the unknown future.
"Since God is my light and salvation, what can I fear?
The Lord is the stronghold of my life, so I am confident
."

"Trust and Obeyis a wonderful hymn."
A young boy had his own version of that hymn.
He came home from his Sunday School one day and said that they had been singing "Trust and O.K.!"
There is a great wisdom in that young man's version.
Those who trust God find that their lives are "OK!"
Trust does not eliminate our troubles and faith does not deny our fears.

The psalmist has past experiences of God's goodness and care that enabled him to cope
with his anxiety and difficulties.

A messenger from Oliver Cromwell was sent to the continent of Europe for important diplomatic work.
He stayed one night in a seaport town, but was unable to sleep that night - tossing and turning.
As was the custom in this somewhat luxurious hotel, a porter shared the room and was sleeping soundly
until the diplomat's noisy fretful movements awakened him.

He asked the master why he could not rest that night.
The diplomat expressed his worries about how his efforts would be received and his fear
that something could go wrong.
The valet asked his master if he could ask him a question or two.
The first was: "Did God rule the world long before we were born?"
To which the master answered, "Most assuredly He did!"

"And will God rule the world long after we are both dead?"
And he responded, "Certainly He will!"

"Well, then, master, why not let God rule in the present also?"

The Psalms have been called an "act of hope."
What is wonderful for us in Christ is that the faith of the Psalms is a confidence, which stands firmly
against all of the loss and pain, and suffering and struggles of life.
The Psalms are a light to people who walk in darkness.
They provide hope.
They are a reminder that our fears may be faced and that we do not face them alone.

"The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear?"
This is the confidence to face whatever comes.
We can also have that confidence.
We can face our personal fears.
God has promised to be with us also.

The one desire of the Psalmist -- the one longing that is experienced -- is to be close to God.
Psalm 27: 4,8 reads: "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.
'Come,' my heart says, 'seek his face!' Your face, Lord, do I seek
."

Listen to the words of poem written by an anonymous author:

"Doubt sees the obstacles;
Faith sees the way!
Doubt sees the darkest night;
Faith sees the day!
Doubt dreads to take a step;
Faith soars on high!
Doubt questions, "Who believes?"
Faith answers, 'I!' "

One of the young victims of the shooting that took place at the high school
in West Paducah, Kentucky was Missy Jenkins.
Missy remembers getting shot and falling to the floor.
Her twin sister, Mandy, bent over her and cried, "Be strong!"

Missy thought she was going to die.
She realized she couldn't feel anything in her legs.
A teacher tried to reassure Missy that she was just in shock.

Today Missy is in a wheelchair, paralyzed from the waist down.
Doctors do not think that Missy will ever be able to walk again.
Missy is determined that she will.

Remember these words of confidence and trust:
"The Lord is the stronghold of my life, of whom shall I be afraid?"
"I'm going to be able to walk again." Missy declares.
"I really, really, really, really want to walk again!"

And perhaps she will beat the odds.
Because of her strong faith in God, she has been able to forgive Mike Carneal, her assailant,
and she has started to move her foot!

As our Psalm says, "For he will hide me in his shelter in the day of trouble . . .
He will set me on a high rock
."

I close with these confident words of faith: "I believe that I shall see the goodness of the Lord
in the land of the living.
Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage.
Wait for the Lord
!" (Psalm 27:13-14)

Sermon adapted
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