Psalm 27: A goal worth having

SPEAKER_00: I brought one of my favorite books with me today. I don't know, have any of you ever read the book Rocket Boys? It was made into the movie October Sky. May have seen the movie October Sky. The book is better than the movie. The movie's good, but the book is better. So I I recommend it. Um But this book was written by Homer Hickam, who happens to be a friend of mine, and he grew up the um son of a coal miner in West Virginia, but he wanted to be a rocket scientist. And he was a kind of a mediocre student. Everyone expected him to follow his father and his grandfather into the mines. And he decided that's not what he wanted to do. It was the late 1950s, and and Sputnik went up and he decided he wanted to be a rocket scientist. So this book is the memoir of his high school years as he and five of his friends decided that they were going to escape the coal mines and become rocket scientists despite all the odds being stacked against them. And when I knew him, Homer was a uh engineer at NASA. So he made it. But just to give you an example of of their determination, and there is a connection to the psalm. I'm I'm not just in case you're wondering, there really is. Um if you're gonna be a rocket scientist, you have to know calculus. And they had never had a calculus class in his high school before. And so they he barely passed algebra, and he and the other boys taught themselves trig because they wanted to learn um to build these rockets. And they had a teacher who believed in them. Her name was Miss Riley, and she helped convince the principal to offer a calculus class for these guys their senior year. So he finally agreed, and he he was going to limit the class size to six, but or to five, but there were six of them. So he agreed to let six people take the class, and seven kids applied. There was a girl who also wanted to take calculus. And since Homer had the lowest grades of the seven, he was not allowed to take the class. He was the one that got bumped. So because he was um so determined to become a scientist and get out of the mines, he decided to teach himself calculus from the book. So this scene I'm gonna read you is um near the end of their senior year, they're gonna build their their kind of one of their best rockets yet. And Quinton, who was one of his buddies, decides that for this one, Homer has to do all the math. So that's the scene I'm gonna read you. I did the calculations, assuming our rocket reached maximum velocity immediately upon launch and rounding off the altitude to 10,000 feet. The result equaled a velocity of 800 feet per second or 545.45 miles per hour. When I recalculated, I came up with the same result. This was more than five times faster than the Buick could do on Little Daytona, and I found it difficult to imagine one of our rockets could really go that fast. I shoved the notebook away and threw down my pencil. This can't be right. I was disgusted. I couldn't even do the first equation. Quinton took a quick look and pushed the notebook back to me. It's exactly correct. Keep going. Don't lose your nerve. I haven't lost my nerve, I snapped. But I had. The next step was to do the equations for the design of the DeLodel nozzle, and privately I quaked at the thought of attempting them. There were dozens of them. Intricate, enmeshed, one building on the other. One wrong, all wrong. You had the calculus class, Quentin, you worked them. No, he said adamantly. Miss Riley gave you the book. You know calculus as well as I do. Quit stalling. My confidence was gone. Doing those equations was like running a four minute mile, something possible only for someone greater than I. Quentin leaned forward and shook his finger at me. Listen, old man, if you don't work these equations, what will be the point of all we've done? We might end up building a good rocket that'll fly just fine, and all the grown-ups and teachers will brag on us. Who knows? We might even be able to bluff our way past the judges at the science fair. But you'll know, and I'll know, and all the boys will know what could have been if you hadn't lost your nerve. We could have built a great rocket. Well, what's your definition of a great rocket? I asked. He crossed his arms and jutted at his chin. One that does precisely what it's designed to do. It doesn't matter if it flies only two hundred feet. If that's what it's designed to do, and that's what it does, it will be a great rocket. He pointed at the book. We want our rocket to go an altitude of precisely two miles. The equations to make that happen are in the book. Do them. I looked at the tiny letters and signs in the equations. These were the same equations used by Werner von Braun and seemed intimate, secretive, his domain. The first equation I needed to do was the one that defined the thrust coefficient. Quinton reached across me and tapped it impatiently. Are we going to sit here all night? All right, I'll do it, I growled, and Quinton sat back and laughed. That determination is is actually what it's the at the heart of our psalm. Because the book goes on to tell his kind of his single-minded pursuit of what doing whatever it takes to become a rocket scientist, and it's the story of wanting something so badly that you give up everything else, that you you sacrifice for it, you make time for it, and you pursue it against all odds. And at the heart of Psalm 27 is that same kind of desire. Only it's not to be a rocket scientist, it's the desire to know God and to be known by Him. And as we'll see with this Psalm, if we have that, we have everything. So we're going to look at Psalm 27. It's a Thanksgiving Psalm or a Psalm of Trust. And there's a sense in which this psalm is upside down. I was really, really tempted to start at the end and work my way backwards because the more I came to understand it, the more it seems to me that he starts with his conclusion. And if there's a chronology, it's it's in reverse order. We get his conclusion first, then we get what led him to the conclusion, then we get what started the whole process at the end. So I almost I just finally decided not to, but I was really tempted to start at the bottom and work my way backwards. But his conclusion is that he can face every conceivable threat or everything that comes at him in life because God is on his side. And that's the ending place, but it's where he starts. So he's experienced God's deliverance in the past, and that history with God gives him confidence to face whatever's coming in the future. So we're going to look at verses 1 through 3. 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 eat up my flesh, my adverse adversaries and foes, it is they who stumble and fall. Though an army encamp against me, my heart shall not fear. The war arise against me, yet I will be confident. So this is the starting point, but it's also the ending point. He makes these this claim of whom shall I fear, whom shall I be afraid? And that is not kind of this rash uh statement of someone who's just arrogant or boasting. It's the statements of someone who's come close to death and been rescued by God. And I think that's what gives him the confidence to say that. He's lived through these kinds of experiences. Now, he doesn't give us any real details of the actual event that caused him to write this psalm, and there's no historical notation to it, but it could fit well. A lot of people think it fits into his early days when he was fleeing from Saul. So you remember the story we mentioned it frequently throughout this, uh through our Psalms class. From the time he was anointed king uh by the prophet Samuel, he was on the run from Saul for about 15 years. Saul was uh was still on the throne and was determined to kill David, and there was no place for him that was safe. He was hiding in caves in the wilderness, uh exiled in foreign lands for a period, and all the time Saul's after him trying to kill him. Now, as I said, I don't know the exact occasion of when this psalm was written, but here's one possibility that I think is the kind of thing he's remembering. This is 1 Samuel 23, and I'm gonna start in verse 24. Now David and his men were in the wilderness of Maon in Arabah to the south of Jessim, and Saul and his men went to seek him. And David was told, so he went down to the rock and lived in the wilderness of Maan. And when Saul heard that, he pursued after David in the wilderness of Maan. Now picture this like a Hollywood movie. Saul went on one side of the mountain, and David and his men were on the other side of the mountain, and David was hurrying to get away from Saul, and Saul and his men were closing in on them. Oh, as Saul and his men were closing in on David and his men to capture them, a messenger came to Saul saying, Hurry and come, for the Philistines have made a raid against the land. So Saul returned after pursuing David and went against the Philistines, and therefore that place was called the Rock of Escape. I mean, in a few short verses you get this kind of bland description, but if you think about what was happening, it was pretty dramatic. David and his men, which were probably about 200, are on one side of a mountain, and Saul and his army of thousands are on the other side, and they're closing in on him, and the gap is closing, they're not getting away, and then lo and behold, at the last minute, here comes a messenger and says, Oh, the Philistines are attacking, you gotta leave. And Saul has to break off his uh his pursuit of David to go defend his country against the Philistines. So um the providential timing of that had to be obvious. You know, David had to realize that this was the hand of God miraculously coming in and delivering him at the last moment. And I think it's that kind of episode that is giving him the confidence to to make these claims in verse one through three. Because there, if you read through those stories, there are many times like that where God miraculously delivers David. So David can look back on that and say, the Lord is my light and my salvation, of whom shall whom shall I fear? Whom shall I be afraid? And notice he doesn't describe this as say, um, say a soccer match where you've got two even evenly matched teams, you know, like, oh gosh, we've got the good guys or the bad guys, and we don't know who's going to win, but we think God might win. He's describing this as who could possibly stand against my God. There's no contest here. There's nothing to be afraid of. So even in the worst possible scenario, when he has to face a hostile army, that's the though an army encamp against me, or even an all-out military assault, though war arise against me, he says, um, his heart will not cave into fear and his faith won't waver. So his conclusion that the whole ending point of this psalm is whatever the problem, whatever the enemy, whatever the difficulty, God is greater than all of it. And if he's the my light and my salvation, what possible thing should I have to be afraid of? So the question is, how did he get there? How did we reach this conclusion? What led him to make that kind of confidence? And as I said, the psalm is upside down. We get the conclusion first. So let's look at four through six, and this is where we're going to spend most of our time. One thing I have asked of the Lord, that that will I seek after, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon 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 cover of his tent, he will lift me high upon a rock, and now my head shall be lifted up above 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. So David has made a request of God, and God granted it, and I think that's what leads him to this the conclusion that he has nothing to fear because God is on his side. So, what's the request he's made? Um, that I went to dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life. So, what's he asking? I don't think he's asking to live in the temple. Or in his day it was the tabernacle. The temple hadn't been built yet, probably. And the tabernacle was the place where where Jews would go when they wanted to meet God, when they wanted to be in his presence. And I think mo even in that day and age, they would have known that God was not limited to one geographic location. In other words, God was everywhere. Yes, they could go to the temple and offer sacrifices and be in his presence, but I don't think they thought he was limited to only being in the tabernacle. So I don't think David's asking for to be in a place so much as to have that relationship, to be in a relationship with God. He wants to know God and to be known by him to the extent that he feels at home in his presence. Now think about that. What does it mean to be at home if we were dwelling in the house of the Lord to feel at home in his presence? For most of us, home is the place where we feel the most secure. You know, it's the place where we can really be ourselves, where we're the most comfortable, where we have the most freedom to be honest about who we are. You know, we can let our hair down, drop our guard, relax, you don't have to worry if you've got makeup on or not, or you know, if your socks match, or if you're on your best behavior, you can just kind of wear your grungiest clothes and be yourself and know that your family or the people at your home are going to love you no matter what. And that's the kind of thing he's asking for. To be at home in God's presence, to be so comfortable and so secure and so protected that he can just be himself and know that God loves him. So at home, our roots are the deepest. It's where we know we belong, we know we can be ourselves, and no matter what, our family is going to have to love us anyway. So, home is that place where you find the deepest comfort, the deepest security, the most rest. And that's what David wants. He says, That's what I'm asking for. I want to be loved and secure in God's presence. So I think he's asking to know God and to be known by Him. Now, for most of us, I think a lot of us find that being at home at our parents' house. You know, it's a place you can go and you can go to the refrigerator without asking, and kind of take what you want, and put your feet up on the coffee table, you know, and know that that someone will take care of you, um, and you don't have to worry about all the, you know, the dinner and the chores and the neatness because someone is there taking care of you. Um and I I think that's what he's getting at here. A couple of years ago I lost both my mother-in-law and my mother to different cancers. And since that time, my my father and my father-in-law have moved to smaller houses and apartments, and we go visit them, but it's just not the same. You know, the furniture I grew up with is gone, you know, it's a lot of it's in my house. But um you know, it's not the same. It's not at my dad's house, and and he doesn't have the big extra bedrooms or the big kitchen that the whole family can gather in. So we've kind of it doesn't feel like home. It feels like my dad's place, you know, it's it's not really that wonderful experience we had when the kids were little of going to grandma's. And that was you know, that was the height of fun to go to grandma's house and have everything kind of taken care of in these wonderful holidays. Um and I didn't realize when we lost our mothers that we were losing that that sense of home, that place you go where you can kick back and just be yourself. And I think that kind of feeling is what David's after here: being at home in your parents' house, only he's asking to be at home in God's house, to that that would be the place where he would be most comfortable, most secure, and certain he belongs because he's in this relationship with God. Now, the striking thing to me about this request are the little adjectives he uses. One thing I've asked of the Lord that I will seek after, and he asked all the days of my life. So one and only one thing. He suggests that if God would grant him this one request, then God could deny him everything else and he'd still be happy. And then he asked all the days of my life, as, you know, this is not something that he feels on Sundays or religious holidays, but something that he would have every day, day in, day out, um, for the rest of his life. I think he's asking that this desire not change. And that's striking to me. Of all the things he could have asked for, he asked for this and only this forever. So he's got this single-minded uh determination, this is what I want, and he's consistent with it. That's why I brought up the Rocket Boys. It's that same kind of desire. I want this so badly, this is how I'm gonna focus my life around it. Now, compare that kind of desire to the spirit of our age. I have teenagers, so one thing I've learned about teenage culture is it's marked by the desire for change. You know, whatever they're doing, they it's not right. If they're in school, they can't wait to give you out and have a real job and do something real. And if they're working summer jobs, they're like, oh, I can't wait to escape this routine and this drudgery, and you know, they're never the right age. They're too old for some things, and they're too young for some things, and um, whatever they have, it's not enough, it's not right, it's not satisfying. And it's teenagers are kind of driven by this desire to be someplace else and to be um for the new. And in that sense, they're not much different than the rest of us. You know, our culture really tells us that we ought to be questing after the new all the time. You know, if your job's getting difficult, we'll just change jobs. If your life is getting routine, we'll just move to a new city. You know, if your sermons aren't challenging enough for you, just find a new church. Friends don't meet your expectations, throw them away, find new friends. You know, if life gets rough or hard or boring or mundane, just make a change. Find someone new, something new, and keep moving. And that that's what society tells us is the answer. If you want to be fulfilled, you have to be on this quest for the new and the upwardly mobile. You know, they think only lowly uneducated people live in one city all their lives, you know, that's what we're told. Or only only backward people have one spouse for a whole lifetime. I mean, heavens, you know, we need variety. We need to move on to the next thing, the new spouse, the new job, the new hobby, the new car, new fad, new opportunity. You know, that's and that's what we're told by society. And yet, scripture is very clear that we are fools if we spend our life in the quest for the new. That if you read through like Proverbs and some of the other Psalms we haven't looked at, the scripture is pretty clear that we ought to seek the one thing worth having and then be as devoted to it as we possibly can. So we ought to seek God, to seek his wisdom, and then ref cling to it with everything we've got and refuse to be moved. So the world says, you know, seek news, seek change, and the scripture says, no, that's the height of folly. The height of wisdom is seeking God and devoting yourself to that. There's a New Testament example of this in Mary. You're probably familiar with the story of Mary and Martha. And Mary is commended by Jesus because she rose above the clamor of the household and the chores and everything that needed to be done and what her friends would think if she didn't get a meal on the table to just sit at Jesus' feet and learn. And he commends her for that. He says she's chosen the thing that will not be taken away from her, the thing that will last. And I think that's the same kind of thing David's getting at. And Mary stands in contrast. There's a man in the New Testament named Demas, who's described in Paul's writing. And when we first see him mentioned, he's described as serving the Lord. But the last mention we have of him is in 2 Timothy 4.10, where Paul writes, Demas, having loved this present world, has deserted me. So you have Mary choosing what's best and right and what won't what she can't lose, which is knowing Jesus and his teaching, and you have Demas, in contrast to that, allowing himself to be seduced away by the world. So Scripture says, seek the one thing worth having, and that is the wisdom of God, the fear of the Lord. What gets in our way? Why don't we do that? I'd like to suggest that busyness is the major culprit. I mean, at least it is in my life, so I'm assuming I'm it's somewhat typical. I think a lot of us can find can resist the more overt influences of the world. You know, we can turn down the greed or the promiscuity or the addictions or the materialism, and that doesn't seduce us so much, but it's more difficult to turn down busyness. You know, we can be just as busy with religious activity as we can with career activity or lifestyle activity. And we get committed to so many things and projects and tasks and appointments and that we can't be single-minded in our pursuit of God because we're just dominated by the urgent and all the things that must be crossed off our to-do list. And our culture holds that up as a virtue. You know, the busier you are, the more important you must be. If you're not busy, you must not be very important. And so it encourages us to take on more and more and more. And the more we take on, the more we're dominated by the urgent and less dominated by the important. So think about what we learned like in in Nehemiah last fall. The call of Scripture is to find your calling and to do that. As we learned in Nehemiah, to start with the broken wall in front of your house and work there. Do what God has put in your life to do. Or for those of you that were here two years ago, or last year, I guess, when we We're doing Romans when Paul starts out section in 12 and 13. He says, Find what God has gifted you to do and do that, and say no to everything else. Because we're a body working together. We're not individuals who have to do it all and clean it all all by ourselves. So I think sometimes the our desire for the things that are important gets just blocked out by being just too busy. So before we leave this section, let me cut a couple more things he says. He suggests that we, if God grants this desire to dwell in the house of the Lord, to know him and to be known by him in such a way that you're most at home there, he suggests that it will satisfy us both emotionally and intellectually. Look at the rest of verse 4. He asks to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in his temple. Now I think what's behind that poetic language is gazing on the beauty of the Lord is not so much his physical beauty as his character, his holiness, his um who he is and what he is. And that would satisfy us emotionally. It's a relationship to to be in um to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord, whereas to inquire in his temple is wisdom, is to gain knowledge and insight. And I think what David's saying is if he grants me this, it will fulfill both all my both my emotional desires and my intellectual desires. So gazing upon the beauty of the Lord, I could have that relationship that would fulfill him emotionally, and then meditating or inquiring on the temple of God would uh satisfy his intellectual curiosity. And then in five and six he says, knowing this, if we gain this, being at home in God's presence, it will get us through the day of trouble. So five and six, he will hide me in his shelter in the day of trouble, he will conceal me under the cover of his tent, he will lift me high upon the rock. The idea is when I'm in trouble, if I know God and know who he is and what he's done for me and who he is, it will get me through that day. And that's he uses two kinds of metaphors, which I had a hard time with, but I think my best guess is they're referring to two different kinds of protection. The hide me in his shelter and the conceal me under cover of his tent have the idea that I'm in the middle of the battle. So whatever the difficulty is, God hasn't removed me from it, but he will get me through it. He will shelter me and protect me through it. The lift me high up on the rock and my head lifted above his enemies has the idea that he has now removed me from the battle. So whether he keeps me in the battle, he will protect me, or he removes me entirely and takes me out of that battle or that difficult circumstances so that I can sing praises to him. Either way, he will get me through. So, and I think that's hopeful because that gives us a clue that there will be days when God will leave us in the fray, but he will protect us and get us through, and there will be times when he will lift us out of it and uh remove us from that, put us on the high ground so that we can sing and rejoice. Now, most of us are probably familiar with those six verses of the Psalm. They're often quoted, especially verse 4 or and the verse 1, but a lot of people don't read the rest of it. And the difference between verse 6 and verse 7 are so striking that some scholars have speculated that they're actually two different psalms that got stuck together at some point. Because in 1 through 6 you have this wonderful confidence statement of pursuing God and having this changed heart that comes from knowing Him and then the confidence that brings. And then in verse 7, you get these cries for mercy and pleading for mercy. I think they're connected, and I think this is seven through twelve is what led to the request in verse 4, which led to the conclusion in verse 1. Because it's it's upside down, it's just upside down chronologically. Let me explain that, see if I can do a little better. David wants to know God and be in his presence, but God is holy and he is not. And this is a real problem because God demands perfection, and he's not only morally perfect, he's just, he loves good, he hates evil, and we are ridden with evil. We fail and we fail again. And when we sin, it's not just unfortunate, it's wrong. It's morally wrong. We have broken laws, and like all lawbreakers, there's a price to pay. We deserve condemnation, we deserve punishment, and a just and righteous God is duty bound to uphold the law and deal out that punishment. Now, fortunately for us, we have someone else who took the punishment for us, and that is, of course, our Lord Jesus Christ. But the problem for David is how could I possibly be at home in the presence of God? How can I stand before the throne of God when he's holy and I'm not? When he's perfect and I'm dirty and spoiled and defiled? How can I hope to be in his presence and a just and holy and righteous and perfect God when I am sinful and selfish and spoiled? So you get these pleas in seven through twelve that say the only hope, um, the only way God could grant his request in verse four is if God is merciful. And so I think what you have in seven through twelve is David pleading for that very mercy. God has to do something about his sinfulness before David could ever hope to be at home in his presence. And so that's what I think is going on in 7 through 12, that cry for God to deal with, to teach me, to heal me. So let's read that section. 7 through 12. Hear, O Lord, when I cry aloud, be gracious to me and answer me. You have said, Seek my face. My heart says to you, Your face, Lord, do I seek. Hide not your face from me, turn not your servant away in anger. O you who have been my help, cast me not off, forsake me not, O God of my salvation. For my father and my mother have forsaken me, but the Lord will take me in. Teach me your way, O Lord, and lead me on a level path because of my enemies. Give me not up to the will of my adversaries, for false witnesses have arisen against me, and they breathe out violence. So there's two petitions in this section, and they he gives one and expands on it, then he gives the other and expands on it. So in verse 7, hear, O Lord, when I cry aloud, I think that's a plea for a relationship with God. And then in verse 11, teach me your way, O Lord, is a plea for God's wisdom. And so again, you can see it relates to the desire in verse 4 to be at home in his presence and have both that emotional relationship need satisfied and the knowledge and wisdom needs satisfied. So, hear, O Lord, is the plea for a relationship, teach me your way, O Lord, is the plea for wisdom. We're going to take him in order. So when he says, hear me, he's basically, I think, calling out for God to be his loving father, for God to draw near to him, to listen to him, to pay attention to him. It's an emotional request. It's a it's there's a longing in it. And I think all of us know something of that longing. We all want someone who will be in our life, who will listen to us when we need listening to, and seek us out and care for us, and let us whine and complain when we can't take it anymore, or rejoice with us in the good times. Everybody wants to be known like that and to be loved like that. Um and you can see the contrast in this hear me and for and do not forsake me. Forsake me shows up twice in this section in in 9 and 10. And these contrasts of I'm seeking your face, don't hide it, be gracious to me, don't turn away in anger. When he says, My mother and father have forsaken me, but the Lord will take me up, I think he's pointing to the idea that if there's one relationship we ought to be able to count on, it ought to be our parents. I mean, the one set of people who ought to be committed to loving us and caring for us and paying attention to us ought to be my parents, but even they will fail us. They may not be the parents that they could have been, or um, they might not even been loving at all. And so I think he's recognizing no other relationship is going to satisfy. No other relationship other than God is gonna meet that emotional need we have to know and be known. And if God is not my loving father, if he won't listen to me, then I'm utterly lost, I'm utterly forsaken. And if you think about that, David hit that hit in his life over and over again. When we first meet him, Samuel has come to anoint a new king, and David's father brings his seven brothers before Samuel one at a time, and Samuel finally has to ask, isn't there another one? And you get this impression of, oh yeah, yeah, you know, that guy out there with the sheep, yeah, the youngest one. That eighth son I have, oh yeah, I forgot about him. You know, it's kind of like it's like he didn't even think enough of David to call him in for the feast. You know, he left him out with the sheep. Um and then you see as David gets older, he's uh works in Saul's court and he plays the harp and he tries to care for Saul, and of course, Saul goes into these fits of rage and insanity and tries to kill him, so he's betrayed again by that relationship. You see his relationship with um Jonathan, which is a wonderful and deep, impressive friendship in the Bible, and yet he eventually loses Jonathan to death. We saw a couple of weeks ago his son Absalom rebelled against him and tried to kill him. There are instances where one of his wives ridicules him in public. So you get this sense of he's learned along the way that people are going to let him down, and that he wants that kind of intimacy, but we cannot count, look for that anywhere but in God. He's the only one who will not fail us and forsake us, but we don't earn that favor, God grants it. So he's pleaing to God, don't turn your face away, don't show me anger, show me grace, don't abandon me to my enemies, to my sinfulness. So the second petition in verse 11, Teach me thy way, O Lord, is a if seven is a call for intimacy, eleven is a call for wisdom. And that's striking to me because David was a very talented man. I mean, if you look through the stories, um, you see he was clever, he was strong. Think of all the stories when he was fighting off predators as a shepherd. He's physically strong, athletic. The Goliath story tells us that. He had great musical talent, he plays the harp, he wrote all these songs, he's got literary, poetic talent, and he inspired the devotion of an army. He displays military genius at some points and wisdom as a king. So you have this very, very talented, capable, gifted man, and yet he's saying, God, if you don't give me wisdom, I am nothing. He knows he's a sinner, he knows he's falling short, and he's saying, with all my ability, with everything I've accomplished, I know that I am nothing without you. I can't handle life by myself. It's too much for me. So his prayer is, you know, God, you need to make that level path for me. You need to teach me the way of to walk and the way to go, because if you don't, I will fail. I'm not smart enough, I'm not strong enough, I'm not able enough. And again, you get this sense of urgency. Hmm, we're running out of time here. Let's see, I'm gonna skip that. Um let me do the concluding verses then in 13 and 14. He I think this brings us back to the starting point. He says, I believe that I shall look upon 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. So I think he's coming back to that confidence. If God is on my side, then whom shall I fear? If God grants this request to let me feel at home in his presence, to make me his child, to make me to know me and to let me know him, then I have everything. I have confidence, I know I shall look upon the goodness. And then he adds this wait, wait for the Lord and be strong, which I think is addressed to his readers. And the idea is you can't manipulate God into doing this. You can't, you know, twist his arm and get him to do it the way you want him to do it, or to grant it in the way you want it granted, or in the timetable you have. God will answer this prayer, but he will do it in his own way. And so our job is to learn to wait, eagerly wait, because his coming and his answer is as sure as the dawn. He will grant us the deepest desires of our heart, but he does it in his timetable and not ours. Don Baker, y'all know Don Baker, he's one of the elder emeritus here. He put it this way once. He said, God always answers prayer. Sometimes the answer is no. Sometimes the answer is wait, and usually the answer is, I've got a better idea. So I like that. There is always an answer, and the answer is worth waiting for. So, how do we apply this to our life? How what are you supposed to take away from this? Um, let me just make sure we we have the progression of the psalm. If you start from the bottom, you have David knowing he's sinful, knowing he needs God's a relationship with God, knowing he needs God's wisdom, which leads him to the plea to let him know God and be known by him, that to dwell in the house of the Lord forever. And when that is granted, then he's utterly confident that no matter what happens, he can face everything. Um so what do we learn from that? I think one thing to take away is to learn as David did that the only relationship that will fulfill us is a relationship with God. If we're looking to our friends or our family or our spouses or our children to fulfill us and to provide that intimacy, we will be disappointed because we are all still sinful, we're all still in this process, and we will disappoint and uh let each other down. Now, you may or not be blessed with those kinds of relationships. If you are, thank God that it's a wonderful gift to have uh a loving family or loving friends. Um but we have to realize that we can't look to them to fulfill that kind of need. All of us, whether we're married or single or in big families or small families or all alone, we'll only find that completeness and the kind of intimacy we crave in a relationship with God. So if we haven't learned that lesson, we ought to ask God to teach it to us. And the corollary to that, I think, is don't be surprised then when people let you down. I mean, when our best friends neglect us or um we have squabbles at church or um people get into disagreements or fights, we ought to think, yep, that's the way of things. That's how life is, until God ultimately frees us from sin. We will we ought not to be surprised. And we ought to be quick then to forgive and to uh seek reparations and to move on. Sometimes I think we expect so much of each other because we're all Christians that we um demand perfection when we ought to be the ones who know this side of heaven we're not going to find perfection. So the first thing is realize that all relationships will let us down, except a relationship with God, and don't put those expectations on our friends, and be quick to forgive when they do let us down. Secondly, I think learn as David did that no matter how capable we are, it's not good enough. That there is a world out there that is too hard to handle. And if we think we've got what it takes to face it all alone, all by ourselves, we are we are fools. We will be disappointed and probably humiliated. Because the Bible's pretty clear that everything we have comes from God's hand. And it's real tempting to start thinking, oh, I've got this great job because I worked hard in school and I got this good education, and I I had all those jobs to pay for it, and I earned this. Everything I've got, I earned, I worked for it, I deserve it, I stuck it out, I got that education. I worked hard to get where I am, it's mine. And yet the Bible says, if you have all that, it's because God gave it to you. It's because he gave you the opportunities, the education, the ability to stick it out. Um so whether whatever strengths or capabilities we have are gifts that God has given us, not things that we have earned apart from him. And even as Ephesians says, the good works we do are the ones that he prepared for us to walk in, to let us be part of that plan. So the third thing then is drop the urgent and pursue the important. I mean, being busy is a trap. And you ought to ask yourself, are you called or are you driven? You know, if you're called, you're doing what you ought to do. You're using the gifts God gave you and the places He's put you, ministering to the people He's put in your life, and letting them minister to you. If you're driven, you're trying to be the Savior. You're trying to do it all, have it all, and clean it all. You know, driven is not knowing your purpose, it's not knowing your goals or your limits of your season in life, so that you take on anything and everything, going through your days in this whirlwind of scheduling and appointments and commitments. So take a moment to ask, am I driven or am I called? Am I doing what I'm called to be, or am I or am I um driven and trying to do everything at once? And if you don't have time to ask that question, you've got your answer. Um if you're too busy to seek God in his kingdom, then you are too busy. I had a a epiphany of this, this was about four years ago. A friend of mine called and she had this major crisis. I mean, just horrible event happened in her life, and I could not help her because I had to be at this place to pick up this child, and I had to do this, and I had to get this for that committee. And I hung up the phone and I thought, this is wrong. I am so busy that when she called in desperate need, I literally could not stop to even help her because all the balls were in the air and they were all gonna fall, and I thought I felt awful. I mean, it was just one of these awful convicting moments where God showed me how wrong I was. And it's like, okay, I'm punting things off the schedule. I begin disentangling from a whole lot of things because I thought I never want this to happen again. If I don't have time to care for the people God's put in my life, then I I it's just it was wrong. Um, so figure out where God has you now. What prior what are the priorities you should have in your life at this season of your life so that you can do those and say no to other things. Um now, having said that, there are times, I mean I there are times when you have to realize that someone else has to feed you, for example, if you're raising young children or caring for elderly parents. I think those are times when you have to realize that that takes priority and um it's okay to come to church and get fed there without teaching yourself. There are times when you just have to let someone else help you. So I don't want to I do think, yes, pursue the single-minded devotion of David, of of knowing God and being known by Him, but that will work itself out at different ways at different seasons in your life. I want to conclude with one more scene from The Rocket Boys. Um, because I think this describes accurately the attitude we ought to have toward the Word of God and toward a relationship with Him. At this point in the book, um Miss Riley, Homer's teacher, has gotten a book for him and she's called him into her classroom after school to give it to him. So she says, This came in yesterday, she said. Miss Bryson and I put our heads together and ordered it for you here. Miss Bryson was a librarian. I took the book and read its title, written in gold gilt on a black bar and printed on the front cover. It was the most wondrous book title I'd ever seen: Principles of Guided Missile Design. I flipped through the pages of the book, seeing chapter titles, amazing chapter titles passing before my eyes, aerodynamics relating to missile design, wind tunnels and ballistic ranges, momentum theory applied to propulsion, and flow through nozzles. Then I read the most wonderful title of a chapter in any book I'd ever held. Fundamentals of Rocket Engine. There's calculus in there and differential equations, Miss Riley said. You can ask Mr. Hartsfield, he might help you. I reverently turned the book in my hands. Can I keep it for a while? It's yours, Sonny. You can keep it forever. I felt as if she had just given me something straight from God. I don't know how to thank you, I said. All I've done is give you a book. She said, You have to have the courage to learn what's inside it. That, I think, is a picture of the desire we ought to have for God in his word. Reverently, the amazing, wonderful stories in the Bible, the Psalms, the prophets, the letters, you know, the histories. We have been given a gift straight from God. It's his word. And we ought to be as excited about learning it and studying it as Homer was about his principles of guided missile design. Because I think what the Psalm teaches us is the one thing worth having, the one thing that will never fail us, the one thing we can count on no matter what, that will get us through is being at home in God's presence. If we have that, we have everything worth having. And it doesn't matter what else is is lost to us or denied us or goes wrong. And the best way to get to know him is to read his book, to study it, to learn it, to delve into it. As Miss Riley says, all I've done is give you a book. You have to have the courage to learn what's inside. So just like he wanted to learn the secret of rocket engines to reach his dream, we can reach that goal by learning what's in the Bible. Let me pray. Father, thank you that you are a God who loves us and you are merciful to us, and that when we cry out to you to hear us, to teach us, to show us your graciousness and not your anger, that you delight to answer. And we pray that we would um that you would teach us the heart David had, to make us all people who want to be at home in your presence, whose single-minded, consistent desire is to know you and to be known by you, and to be secure and protected in your presence. We just thank you that you've given us this chance, given us your word and a way to to um to know you. And most of all, thank you that you solve the problem of our sin by sending your son to die for us so that we could come boldly before your throne as children and um loved members of your family. In Jesus' name. Amen.