I want us to look at this Psalm tonight and it's Psalm twenty seven Psalm twenty seven there's a verse in this Psalm that I remember from way way way back when I was a young man when I was traveling with the open-air band of preachers The largest man in our party, and he was large, not quite as big as Al Smith, but on the way there. And his name was Bill Gamble. And he used to use this verse as his verse. Verse ten, when my father and my mother forsake me, then the Lord will take me up. The reason why this was his verse was because he didn't know his real name. He was abandoned on the doorstep of an orphanage when he was too young to know anything about it as an infant. So he was brought up in the orphanage on the step of which he was abandoned as a very little child. This was the verse when my father and my mother forsake me then the Lord will take me up I can remember the nights when he would give his testimony he married a Christian woman though he was a drinking man and well on as far as manhood was concerned he had served in the armed forces and he was anything but a husband to his wife. While he was still in the army, and she was praying so hard at home, he crossed the barracks square, and there was a YMCA on the property, and they were singing a hymn. And it was about coming to the Lord Jesus. I am coming, Lord. coming now to thee. In his outside jacket pocket, he had a gun, and his hand was on the gun, and he was making his way to a clump of trees on the other side of the barracks square that he might shoot his brains out. And he stopped dead in his tracks, and he listened. And then he changed direction, went into the YMCA building and sat in the back. And that night God laid hold of him. And late in the evening he sent his wife a telegram to say, I'm safe at last. He was on the very edge of not being. But I'm glad God saved him. I'm glad he gave God the opportunity because we've stood shoulder to shoulder in preaching in the open air. But that's not my message tonight. It's just what I associate with this Psalm. I want you to look the Psalm down. It's not a very long one. Fourteen verses. I can remember looking at one of Graham Scroggie's book. to see what he had about this psalm and it was very interesting. He suggested that the psalm, I'm going to read it to you in a moment, falls into two parts. This is what he says. Two distinct parts. Verses one to six and then seven to fourteen. The first he suggests is dominated by the element of faith and the second is dominated by the element of fear. He points out verse two and he says, we have the past in verse two. And then he points out verse three and he says we have the future in verse three. When the wicked, even my enemies and my foes, came upon me to eat up my flesh, they stumbled and fell. The past. 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 will I 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 temper, his temple. But Graham Scroddy didn't observe that the whole Psalm has to do with the present. A reference in verse two to the past and a reference to the future in verse three. But I want you to look this down with me and see how the psalmist really and truly is talking about the present. Let's begin at verse one and miss out the verses that I've read to you. The Lord is my light and my salvation. Whom shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life. Of whom shall I fear? be afraid. Verse fourth. Verse five. 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 and 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 said, 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 thine heart. Wait, I say, on the Lord. Now I want to point out to you four couplets in this Psalm, and they have to do with the present. The Lord is. my salvation. Verse one. The next couplet is life and strength. The Lord is the strength of my life, of whom shall I be afraid. Verse six. The third is 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. Lift it up and sung. And again the Lord is responsible for this. And finally in verse thirteen, I had fainted unless I had believed to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. So what do we have? Light and salvation. The Lord is. Life and strength. The Lord is. Lifted and singing. Now shall these be. And fourthly, the land and seeing. The land of the living, present tense. If we think about these four couplets and the alliteration, if not mine, it's right here in the psalm. Light and salvation, life and strength, lifted and singing, and the land and seeing. It's right here in the psalm. I think that perhaps we could say that we have in the first public the suggestion that the Christian life must have a start. Light and salvation. The Lord is my light and my salvation. Salvation has to have a beginning and the Lord is its beginning. It's not until the Lord comes into your life that you really start to live and you certainly cannot be saved if you haven't let the Lord into your life. Secondly, the Christian life will be sustained. The Lord is the strength of my life. And in the third one, the suggestion is that Christian life should be sweet. and now shall mine heart be lifted up above mine enemies, therefore will I offer in his tabernacle sacrifices of joy, I will sing praises unto the Lord. Salvation is meant to bring into the life an uplift and a song. The Christian life should be sweet. And finally, the Christian life should be satisfactory. I had fainted unless I had believed to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. The Christian life must have a start. The Christian life must be sustained. The Christian life should be sweet. And the Christian life leads to satisfaction. Let's think about light and salvation. If you will look closely at the verses in which those expressions are found, you'll find the Lord, the Lord, the Lord, the Lord in each of those four. And the fulfillment of the things that I just mentioned lie in making Jesus Lord of our lives. Everything depends upon him. He's the means of salvation. He's the secret of strength. He's the theme of song and the center of satisfaction. That's what these four phrases are meant to tell us. Now, light and salvation. What do you know about light? How many of you have ever had a prism? in your hand. And how many of you have ever looked through a prism? I'm going to ask Mr. Harvey what you see when you look through a prism, because he's seen one and handled one. A rainbow, exactly. What you see, a prism is used to split up the components of light. And so you see them in a rainbow. When you look at a rainbow in the sky, it might not be as clear as the prism. The prism is manufactured so that you can see how perfectly and in what fashion light is broken up. It has component parts. It has what is called a spectrum. And you go from that which gives to us light, The yellow rays, they're right in the center. And then there's that which warms us in light. And that is red. Those rays are red. And at the other end of the rainbow, they are violet. And those are the rays in light that bring about fruit bearing. Now there are lessons to learn in the light. It goes from... Red, through yellow, to violet. There are other colors there, but all of these things are necessary for life. We couldn't live without light. The Lord is my light and my salvation, and we certainly cannot live life to the fullest if God is, if the Lord Jesus is not living his life through us. The Lord is my light and my salvation. Whom then shall I fear? The Bible says of mankind that men love darkness rather than light. And then he gives us the reason, because their deeds are evil. The man who sins doesn't come to the light. lest these things should be revealed. But we as believers should be living, not only living in the light, but living in the enjoyment of the light and all that it can produce in our lives. The Lord is my light and my salvation. Now, I remember a long time ago, the first time I ever went into a deep cave, really a set of caves. You went from one to the other and they were linked by a natural tunnel. I had never been in there before and it was quite an interesting and to me an experience of adventure. We had a guide and while I was listening I saw something that was very striking to me The caves were so far underneath, and naturally no light reached them. And they had been like that for a long, long time. Who knows, except the Lord, how long those caves have been there in utter darkness. But they were discovered by some man, I suppose. And then there was an opportunity to make money, and so lightning was installed. and I found out that around the lights in that cave moss was growing. It certainly hadn't grown there before, but the light induced it. Little plant cells somehow blowing in cave, I don't know, but they settled around the light and it was the light that gave the moss, the The possibility of living. There was no living thing there at all in the darkness. But when they introduced the light, it was only must. But it was a living thing. It spoke to me. It showed me how that even nature is dependent upon the light. That's why the Word of God says, The Lord is my light. because from the light comes everything that is worthwhile to make up life for us. The Lord is my light and my salvation. You know, it was not until our sin was brought to the light that we began to seek for salvation. And he that seeks The Word of God says he's going to find. Do you remember the night or maybe it was in the daytime when you sought the Lord and you were saved? I don't know what your experience was. I was only thirteen when it happened to me, but I walked home from that little gospel hall that night and I didn't feel the sidewalk under my feet. It was a very strange but wonderful experience. I had begun to live. a brand new kind of life because of the light. The spiritual light that had come into my life in the person of the Lord Jesus. Now the Word of God says of us as believers, if we walk in the light, now we come to the light for salvation and we are saved from hell, but if we do not continue to walk in the light while we don't lose our salvation, we lose all of the benefits of it and God's purpose in saving us if we walk in the light as he is in the light and you know what comes after that when he says the Lord is my light and my salvation the psalmist is speaking of salvation in its broadest and most wonderful sense without light it could not have begun without walking in the lot that life will languish. I don't know whether some are sometimes in your own heart as a believer you begin to question why am I not more excited about the light that the Lord Jesus is to me. Do you ever feel that way? I was so excited that night. Not a people were praying for me. I went along to a meeting and the only reason I went was because I wanted to see a man and listen to a man who somehow found something to like in one of my four sisters. He must have been strange, I thought. My sister said to me, Will you come to the gospel meeting on Sunday night? I said, No, I won't. I have to go on Sunday afternoon. I used to go on Sunday afternoon. Because my mother and dad liked to go to bed on Sunday afternoon and I made too much noise, so they packed me up to Sunday school. But I heard there about how to be saved. My heart was being prepared. And I went along to hear this strange young man who dared to like, and maybe a little more, one of my sisters. That was the night when God spoke to me, and I burst into tears at the back of the chapel, right on the back row but one, right at the end of the pew so I could slip out in a hurry. I didn't make it. I stood up to sing a hymn at the end of the meeting. Sena how thou heart is troubled. God is coming very near. Do not hide thy deep emotion. Do not check the falling tea. I had a lump like an egg in my throat, and the tears were hot behind my eyes, and that did it. I broke down, and I began to weep. Standing there, I couldn't sing anymore. You know what the preacher did? He left the platform. He walked down the aisle, and he put his hand on my shoulder, and he said, what's wrong? The scaly-white. He knew what was wrong. this is what he'd been praying for in my own kitchen I know it didn't know it then but I know it now and that night the Lord became my light and my salvation there isn't any salvation apart from him now look at this second expression here the Lord is the strength of my life in the last light and salvation now Life plus strength. Now God expects certain things of me. He expects certain things of us. He expects of us things that we cannot do in our own strength. If we struggle to do them in our own strength, we will not accomplish them. The Lord who is my salvation, my life and my salvation is the strength of my life. The hymn says, the arm of flesh will fail you. You dare not trust your own. You've lived long enough to know as a Christian that it's the path of folly to walk or seek to walk in your own strength. The Lord who has brought salvation into your life is the one who wants to be the strength of that life. You know, the Lord Jesus said, I am the vine. Here are the branches. Now the branches, they draw their life and their sustenance and their strength to the vine. And the Lord Jesus was saying, Don't try to live the Christian life without me because you can't do it. The Lord is the strength of my life. Then says the psalmist, Of whom shall I be afraid? It's a wonderful thing to be able to face the future and to face your foes and to face the problems that come with living and say, is all taken care of. It's living by faith. And living by faith is expected of all of us. It's one moment at a time living for God in utter dependence on the Lord Jesus. Because we are human, that's not an easy thing. We so want to put in our own little bit, and then we ruin everything. The Lord is the strength of my life. Men and women are meant to be well and strong, but they're not always that way. Old age takes its toll, and as we've said often, old age is not for sissies. The kids couldn't even manage it. They dropped by the wayside. But however, this casts us the more upon God. But the Christian life, no matter how weak we may be physically, our Christian lives are meant to be robust. They are meant to be vital and real and not only worthwhile but useful. The Lord is the strength of my life and it comes one day at a time. What did the hymn writer write? Lord, not for tomorrow and its needs, I pray, but that thou will keep me from stain of sin just for today. God gives strength moment by moment and hour by hour and day by day. The Lord is the strength of my life. And now shall mine head be lifted up. I will sing, yea, I will sing praises unto the Lord. He brought me up also out of an horrible pit from the mirey clay. And then it says, he put a new song into my mouth. Being lifted up is linked with singing. I know it's not always easy to sing. And I know that many of us don't like people listening to our singing because we don't do a very good job of it maybe. But it's a song in the heart that matters. It's the song in the heart that matters. We don't have to move our lips. We don't have to use our vocal cords. We can sing unto the Lord in our hearts, and the Lord hears, and the Lord rejoices. Look at what it says in verse five here. 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 my head be lifted up, and I will sing praises unto the Lord. It's a song from the heart. I hope you try to sing. It's a good thing to sing, even though your voice may have cracked like mine has. Singing does something for you. The opposite of it, of course, is complaining. Singing comes from a full heart. A grumpy heart is always complaining. I often wonder what kind of a reputation I have among the people who know me. You ever wonder that? I can think of a number of things that could make people not like me. Sometimes I open my mouth when I should have kept it closed. Then I have to crawl into the presence of God and pray the Lord will forgive me and the person that I spoke brusquely to. We are so human, but if the Lord is indeed the strength of our lives, We shall be constantly uplifted and continually singing in spite of the dim. This is a song from the heart and it glorifies God. You know, when you have a song in your heart, no matter how poorly you may use your voice to sing, if you have a song in your heart, there will always be a spring to your step. Now, if there's a spring to your step, people will notice that. And they say, what does that man have or that woman have that I don't have? You have a spring in your step. When you have a song in your heart, when you've got a song in your heart, you've got a spring in your step. And then you've got a testimony in the very way that you move. Because people know you have something. You have somebody who really matters and who has changed your life. I'm glad we like to sing here. It always does me good to listen to you singing. I know that sometimes I insist on the time in these hymns. It's because when you sing in time, you sing good. And everybody likes to hear Good singing. I can't see any reason to drag a hymn myself. It creates a problem for me because it seems to me that somehow there's something missing. But you're not like that. I stand here and there are certain faces that I see in the congregation, ladies' faces. And they sing like this. They really have a good time when they sing. And they're the ones who stir the rest of you up to sing. And that's the reason people go away and say, you know, these people amaze me. You'd be amazed how many times they say to me, they sing so well. And I usually say, well, they sing from their hearts. Look at what it says finally here. I had fainted. Unless I had believed to see... the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Now the Lord in the land of the living is meant to be seen, and again it's not with these eyes, it's with the eyes of the soul. The land and seeing. The world says that seeing is believing, but they are back to front. Believing is to see. Once I was blind, but now I can see the light of the world is Jesus. The Bible says or tells us that if the Lord Jesus is in our hearts, we shouldn't be downcast. We shouldn't be unhappy. You heard about the two men. I must have told you about them. Maybe more than once. Just a reminder then. Two men, Christian men, met on the street corner. One said to the other one, how are you today? The other one said, I'm all right under the circumstances. The first fellow said, what are you doing there? We ought never to be under the circumstances. The Lord intends us. by walking with him, loving him, serving him, enjoying him, to be on top of the circumstances. Believing is seeing. I believed to see. Read Psalm twenty-seven again. And think about these things. There's so much more in this Psalm. but try not to forget those four couplets because they they deal with a different aspect of the Christian life all of these put together make a wonderful experience the Lord is my light and my salvation the Lord is the strength of my life he's lifted me up therefore I have a song and one day I'm going to see him in all his beauty. Let's pray together, shall we? Oh, Father, we thank thee that it is such a wonderful thing to be born again. We thank you for what you did for us, the day that you saved us. We thank you for what you do for us every day that we live. when we tumble when we stumble when Lord our hearts almost denyably we know that your love does not flag it doesn't change you still love us and you put at our disposal all of the resources that are needed for us to live life to its fullest forgive us that we don't always take advantage of those resources that are wrapped up in the person of the Lord Jesus. We thank you for him. We ask now that you will dismiss us with your blessing for his name's sake. Amen.