THE REFORMED WITNESS HOUR
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prca.orgDear Radio Friends,
There is nothing that reminds
of life more than death. There is
nothing that makes us appreciate life more than the thought of dying. When we face sickness, disease, affliction,
persecution, pain, then we realize what a tremendous
blessing health and life are. No matter
who we are, we struggle to hold on to this earthly life. After all, man was created with this life,
and it is precious. But there are many
troubles in life that confront us.
Psalm 27
is a beautiful chapter of the Bible that has encouraged and comforted God’s
people throughout the ages. The last verse
of this psalm, verse 14, which we will be considering today, reads like this: “Wait on the Lord: be of good
courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart: wait, I say, on the Lord.” These are words
of encouragement to all of God’s people, whether we are old or young. In fact, David probably penned the words of
this particular psalm before he became king over
It is the goal and
desire of every child of God, young and old, to dwell in the house of God to
all eternity. So says the psalmist in
verse 4 of this chapter: “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
temple.” That is the end towards which
the child of God strives. He wants to
see the goodness of Jehovah in the land of the living. But God’s people will never reach that goal
without first seeing troubles and sorrows in life.
The psalmist speaks
of those troubles in many of the verses of this psalm. For example, verse 2: “When the wicked, even mine enemies and my
foes, came upon me to eat up my flesh, they stumbled and fell.” Or verse 5:
“For in the time of trouble he shall hide me in his pavilion: in the secret of his tabernacle shall he hide
me.” Or verse 10: “When my father and my mother forsake me, then
the Lord will take me up.” Even though we realize that God Himself sends
such afflictions and burdens in life to accomplish our salvation,
that does not relieve our misery.
No one likes to suffer. No one
enjoys heartache and pain. No one will
ever say that they delight in the troubles of this present life. Life’s burdens are oftentimes too much to
bear. So they seem. We can hardly go on with life. Our spirits are dampened. Enthusiasm for life is gone. We become depressed or cast down.
And it is at this
time that our enemy, the devil, is at hand to add to our troubles. The psalmist says that our enemies come upon
us to eat up our flesh. Satan does
that. He tells us in times of trouble
that God has left us and has forsaken us in our time of need. The devil whispers to us at times, “God has
turned His face from you. You seek Him,
but He’s not listening to you. God will
not help you. Why should He? You’re too much of a sinner. You have wronged God far too often.”
The result of all
of these troubles in life is that we can grow weary and faint. Hearts can grow weak. The troubles become heavy burdens, which we
are convinced we can no longer bear. And
we sometimes become impatient with God and try to use our own arm of flesh to
overcome. But we cannot. And then our spiritual feet begin to slip and
we begin to question the hand of God in our lives.
Have you ever had
that? Have you ever had such a heavy
burden in life that such becomes true?
You see a loved one suffer under the hand of a terminal illness, which
we know will eventually take his or her life.
To experience the pain and difficulties involved with such illness or to
sit by helplessly watching one struggle, unable to do much more than to be
there and to pray. It is painful. And it hurts.
It cuts to the depths of one’s soul.
One thing I desire,
O Lord, give it to me, that I may see the goodness of the Lord in the land of
the living.
And that is but one
example of sorrows that can arise in our lives.
We know of many others. Especially when there is the burden, perhaps, of loved ones
forsaking the truth and walking in folly’s way. The pain and the sorrow is
sharp. We grieve for them. We fret and we worry about them even when
they, in their sin, lash out at us. All
these troubles are real. They make our
hearts very, very weak. They hurt us
sometimes even more than physical pain can hurt.
Then is when we
need to hear the words of this chapter and the verse, especially, that we
consider (14). Listen: “Wait on the Lord: be of good courage, … wait, I say, on the Lord.” Do you hear
that, weary soldier of the cross? Wait
on the Lord! All of us need to hear
these words of encouragement, old and young alike.
The term here for
“wait” in this verse literally means “endure,” so that this verse really would
read: “Endure in Jehovah.” Enduring, very simply, means from a negative point
of view—do not give up, do not simply cave in when the
difficulties of life press on you. But
positively, we must remain firm in our conviction that all things in life are
sent us by God and are for our good and will accomplish God’s good pleasure for
us.
When the psalmist
is asking us to wait, he is not asking of us the impossible. We are enjoined here to wait on the Lord, or,
as we have noticed, we must endure “in Jehovah.” That name Jehovah is God’s covenant
name. And, as such, it reminds us of
God’s enduring faithfulness towards His people.
It reminds us of what God has done for us and continues to do for
us.
You see, Jehovah
has made us a promise. That promise is
this: “I will give you the place of your
desires. Heaven awaits you.” That is God’s promise that the people of God
in Christ receive. “I will not forsake
you in your need and I will be there to give you what your desire is.” And as a never-changing I AM (because,
literally, that is what “Jehovah” means), God will certainly keep what He
promises. From eternity God has chosen
His own in His sovereign love. And
nothing in this world is going to snatch them away from the love of God that is
in Christ Jesus.
Our Savior has
come. Christ has already fulfilled, in
principle, our desire to dwell in the house of the Lord. Not only has He done that through His saving
work on the cross, making a place in heaven possible for God’s people, but He
has done that in His very ascension into heaven. Christ has entered into the place of our
desires, into heaven. He prepares for us
our place in heaven. Eternal death,
eternal punishment, has already been taken away through Christ’s death. And eternal life awaits us and is being
prepared for God’s people by Christ.
So we must wait on
God. We must endure and remain firm in
our conviction that all things in this life work toward that eternal state of
glory.
And while we
endure, we are told, we must be of good courage. We must be those who are steadfast in our
courage. We must remain firmly fixed and
immovable in our faith. Steadfastness is
the ability to remain faithful and firm no matter what hardship befalls
us. It is being able to face the storms
of our life and to push on through them without wavering, without giving
in. It is being convicted in our hearts
that the circumstances of our lives do not take place by chance. All of them however, in some way, lead us to
our heavenly home. And
believing that, we are encouraged in our hearts.
But, just as the
ability to wait on the Lord rests in Jehovah, is rooted in Jehovah, so also is
the ability to be of good courage. To
face adversity in life is not pleasant.
In fact, using
the words of the writer to the Hebrews, it is grievous. It is frightening, is it not, to live and to
die of cancer? It is frightening to
think that we are going to have to face tomorrow alone, without that loved
one. Death is frightening.
The worst of all
our troubles is to deal with the sin of a loved one who alienates himself from
us and from the place of our desires, so that we lose him. Who likes to think of these things? Neither do we have the strength in ourselves
to face these things. We simply, in
ourselves, cannot endure. Or be of good
courage, either.
So it is that, in
these moments of life, we are enjoined by the psalmist here to look to
God. “The Lord is my light and my
salvation. The Lord is the strength of
my life. He shall hide me in his
pavilion.” In our need, therefore, we
must listen carefully, quietly, and humbly to the instruction given us in these
beautiful words.
Why? Because God Himself will
strengthen our hearts. That is
what we are told. God strengthens. That is to say, God makes our heart firm and
sure. Have you ever been so frightened
that you visibly shook from it? That is
the picture that the term “strengthen” here in this verse draws for us. When we are so shook up by
the adversities of our life, that we are left totally weak, physically,
emotionally, spiritually. We are
shook up by that adversary. Well, we are
told by the psalmist: When we wait on
the Lord, then He will strengthen us. He
will make us strong-footed. God gives
strength to withstand any affliction and burden, no matter how much pain it may
give us physically or in our soul.
I’m reminded of the wonderfully comforting passage of
Isaiah 40:28-31:
“Hast thou not known? hast thou not heard,
that the everlasting God, the Lord,
the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not,
neither is weary? There is no searching of his understanding. He giveth power to
the faint; and to them that have no might he increaseth
strength. Even the youths shall faint
and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall: But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they
shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they
shall walk, and not faint.” With the
power that the God who never faints or is weary gives us we will endure. We will be steadfast all the way to the
end.
You see, that is
true of you and me because the strength of which this passage speaks is one
that passes all human understanding. It
is the strength that God Himself gives us in our hearts, that spiritual center
of our beings. It is the strength that
has nothing to do with physical strength.
It is an inner strength, a strength of the
heart. It is the inward man that
receives strength from God. And with
that strength we can endure.
I have seen that in
my own pastorate as a minister. We can
see loved ones who suffer patiently under their illness. And we can be so amazed at their
strength. They are stronger than we
are. We marvel at the confession of
their mouths even while they are wracked with pain. I have had that. I think of an elderly saint whom the doctors
kept alive with a respirator. He knew
that the only thing between him and death was that machine, and he said to his
family, “Do not make me stay here any longer.
I want to go home.”
Strength! A
strength that only God can supply.
And let us not
forget that this strength of the heart God promises to give us. He gives it to us. He promises us that. James tells us that you and I must ask that
of God, nothing wavering, because God will give wisdom and strength
liberally. The psalmist in our text
assures us that when we wait on God, God shall strengthen us. That is the word that is used. He shall, of a certainty, He will
strengthen us. We bear in mind, once
again, that this verse directs us to contemplate Jehovah, the covenant God, who
is always faithful to His Word and promises.
And when we in our weakness turn to our heavenly
Father and say, “And now, Lord, what wait I for? My hope is in Thee,” then God hears us out of
heaven and He strengthens our hearts.
When it is truly our desire to see the goodness of the Lord in the land
of the living, then God will see to it that such a desire is fulfilled.
And adversity and
trouble will not get in the way. No, God
will even use these means in the service of fulfilling our desire. God swears by His own name to us that heaven
is ours. We need not fear.
And with that
knowledge, we are of good courage and we wait. That is why the psalmist repeats those words
in this passage. Notice, once again,
just exactly how he says that: “Wait on
the Lord: be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart: wait, I
say, on the Lord.” He repeats it: Wait I say, on the Lord.
You know the
strength that God can give. You know
that He will give you courage to face those troubles. Then wait on the Lord!
In the light of
what we have learned, we can be encouraged by God’s promise to us. And, though the battle is a wearisome one,
though we may be weakened by it, we wait and we wait. And sometimes we wait and wait and wait some
more. But we wait in the strength of
God.
And one day we will
receive the desire of our hearts. Then
we will see the goodness of God in the land of the living. We must not overlook this eternal reward that
awaits us. It is that eternal home of
ours, after all, that we always have before our hearts and minds—especially
while we are suffering. That is true.
In verse 4 of this chapter we learn that heaven is the dwelling place of
Jehovah. God is there. And that includes, of course, Jesus, since He
is there sitting at God’s right hand.
Because they are there, heaven is a place of beauty, a place of
goodness. It is not marred by sin and
the curse. We will not find in heaven
that which causes all of the troubles and sorrows and heartaches in this
present life.
Furthermore, in
verse 13 we learn that it is the “land of the living.” There is no death there, nor any of those
things that lead to death. There will be
no more sickness there. There will be no
more pain and sorrow and alienation from a loved one because of sin. And there we will never die. Nor will we ever be lonely, because God, our
heavenly Father, and our loving Savior will always be there for us.
Those of us who are
troubled by the adversities of life look at the house of the Lord and know that
the afflictions of this present life are not worthy to be compared to the joy
and the happiness that you and I will receive in heaven. In our sorrow and pain, in our loneliness, in
the struggles of this life, we must realize that it will be worth it all when
we get there. Wait on the Lord. Be of good courage. One day we will mount up on wings as eagles,
we will run and never be weary, we will walk and not be faint, for the Lord is our light and our salvation. What shall we fear? The Lord is the strength of our life, of whom
shall we be afraid? Is that not
true? Then wait, I say, on the Lord.
Let us pray
together.
Our almighty God who holds all things in Thy sovereign and good hands, we come to Thee to thank Thee that Thou dost give us strength. If there are those here today who listen and who are weary because of the struggles of their own personal lives, we pray that they might look to the cross of Jesus Christ, and there know that salvation is accomplished and that those who belong to Jesus Christ will mount up as with wings of eagles and that, even now, we can wait on Thee our God and we will find strength from Thee. Father, encourage us by Thy Word. And when, in weakness, we stumble and we fail to place our trust in Thee, pick us up and lead us in the way that leads to life everlasting. We ask these things for Jesus’ sake alone, Amen.
Last modified: 14-aug-07