King David was thinking about the future. And while the future couldn’t come soon enough for him, he still ended the 27th Psalm with these words: “Wait for the LORD; be strong and courageous. Wait for the LORD” (Psalm 27:14).
Those words of waiting didn’t only challenge David. They also challenge us. After all, don’t we find waiting something hard to do? Waiting means having to trust in the Lord and His timing instead of your own timeline. Waiting means not taking matters into your own hands, even when you can do just that. Think of David. He was a king with an army, and a nation at his back and, yet, even David said: “Wait for the LORD; be strong and courageous. Wait for the LORD.”
Psalm 27 talks about celebrating, but it talks about it both in the here and now and in the future. Isn’t that God’s way? You’re saved now, but your salvation also awaits you in the future. And Psalm 27 reflects that now and not-yet part of living as God’s people. Psalm 27 has a portion of waiting even while it celebrates.
I’ll now read part of Psalm 27 again, but this time I want you to listen for the words “temple” and “tent.”
“Only this I ask from the LORD, this only do I seek: To live in the LORD’s house all the days of my life, gazing on the beauty of the LORD and seeking Him in His temple. For he will give me shelter in the day of danger; he will hide me under the cover of His tent; he will set me high on a rock. Then my head will be exalted above the enemies who surround me; I will offer sacrifices in his tent with shouts of joy. I will sing and make music to the LORD” [Psalm 27:4-6].
Temple and tent! They have the same role for God and His people, but they are different in construction. The second, the Temple, followed the first, the tent, which we also call the “tabernacle.”
But when David talked about the Temple, he was talking about the future. We must remember that, in King David’s day, there was no Temple in Jerusalem. There wasn’t a Temple where people could go to be in the presence of the one, true God, where they could go and seek after Him. The Lord had no permanent house. He had no permanent, physical building where you could be or spend your time.
In our Old Testament reading, we heard how David assembled the movers and shakers of the nation of Israel (1 Chronicles 28:1). And then after assembling them, David said how he wanted to build a Temple to replace the tabernacle, the tent, in which the Israelites worshiped since the days of their desert wanderings.
David lived in a palace. But God’s holy presence, what Scripture calls His Shekinah, was in a tent. The tent suited Israel while they wandered in the wilderness. But now that God’s people had lived in Israel for centuries, Kind David was uneasy that his house, his palace, was nicer than the place where God made His presence known among His people. That did not sit right with him. And he was right that it didn’t.
But the LORD told David that Solomon would build the Temple (1 Chronicles 28:2-6). And so, for David, the Temple would become a future event, a promise for him to live out in faith awaiting its future fulfillment. He knew that while he was alive, he would not see the earthly Temple become a reality. The Temple would be built on the Lord’s timeline.
And yet that which was the jewel in the heart of the Temple, the Ark of the Covenant, wasn’t hidden away in a shed, or boxed up in a closet. In King David’s day, they had the Ark of the Covenant of the LORD in the tent of meeting, the tabernacle tent that God had directed Moses to make. It wasn’t a plain unadorned tent; it was a glorious and beautiful tent. We’re learning about that now in our adult Sunday School.
The Tabernacle was the most-important tent in all Israel, for it was the tent where God made His presence known to His chosen people (Exodus 40:34-38). That’s the tent that David spoke of in Psalm 27. But still, David had to “wait for the LORD.”
Yet, in the lesson of waiting for King David, God blessed David–and us–with something even better than the Old-Covenant Temple. God blessed us with the New-Covenant Temple, fulfilling the purpose of that building in His Son, Jesus Christ (John 2:19). When God’s Son became incarnate, in His coming, God gave us all a face to seek. It’s the face of Jesus, the baby in the feeding trough, the boy in the Temple, and the man riding into Jerusalem on a donkey. That same face of God for us, Jesus, suffered, died, rose from the grave, and ascended for our salvation. That’s who David, in the end, was waiting for when he was waiting for the Temple.
And so we circle back to wait for the Lord. We wait for Jesus. We wait for His return, the return of our King, the return of our Good Shepherd.
If you were to read through the psalms, you would find that, in Psalm 27, you’re getting to the end of the psalms about God’s protective shepherding of His people. That theme started back in the well-known Psalm 23. Like in the 23rd Psalm, David trusted in his Good Shepherd. All Psalm 27 is a prayer of trust, a picture of waiting for the Lord.
But it’s hard to wait, isn’t it? The Christmas season now starts before we even eat our Thanksgiving Turkey. It starts even before we enter the season to help prepare us for Christmas, Advent, begins! Isn’t that absurd? We don’t value the virtue of waiting. We have become a society of instant indulgence. As a society, we now get upset when going through a fast-food drive-through and it takes more than a couple of minutes. I’ve even seen people eat food at the grocery store before they pay for it!
And so our impatience, our unwillingness to wait, unmasks our sinful nature for all to see. It shows that we aren’t getting what we want, when we want it, in the way we want it. It shows a heart that doesn’t always seek after the face of the Lord. We find it hard to wait for God to give us what we need in its proper time. It’s hard to be shepherded by the Good Shepherd to the right moment, the right time, the right place, where His promised blessings to us are found.
“That’s me,” you say. I struggle; I have a hard time waiting for the Lord. I have a hard time trusting His words when others are seeking to devour me, when they come against me with harsh and hurtful words, or with physical threats and violence. I want to take matters into my own hands. I don’t want to hide under the shelter of God’s tent and seek protection in the House of the Lord. I want to get out there and mold the world in my image. I want to stand up to my enemies, take them down, and make them give in to me.
Dear saints loved by God: With His shed blood, in the waters of Baptism, Jesus has washed your sins away, even your sins of impatience. Daily and richly, He forgives you. Ask and you shall receive. For this and every sin, for every time you have found yourself unable to wait, Jesus forgives you. Confess your sins of impatience. Ask for His forgiveness. Live in that forgiveness.
When you impatiently wander off the Lord’s path, thinking the grass is greener off the God’s narrow path of salvation, even in those times, your Good Shepherd still seeks you. He comes to find you with His Word and call you home to Him, to call you into the joy of Psalm 27. He calls you to remember the beauty of His Face and the safety of His shelter.
When the entire world seems against you, even your friends and family, pray with David from Psalm 27. Don’t just read that psalm, pray it. Pray with him those words to the Lord: “Do not hide your face from me! Do not push your servant away in anger! You are my deliverer, do not leave me or abandon me, God of my salvation” (Psalm 27:9). “Teach me your way, O LORD, and lead me on a level path … Do not give me over to the will of my foes” (Psalm 27:11-12).
In the heat of your temptation, in the time of trouble, pray, trusting in Jesus’ forgiveness and believing faithfully and firmly that you, with David, “will see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living” (Psalm 27:13). For on the Last Day, on the Day of the Second Advent of our Lord, you will see Him face to Face (Job 19:23-27).
Keep in mind that while you walk the path of this life Jesus is around every corner. He has gone on ahead of you. That’s why He became incarnate and wore the robe of human flesh. For where He has gone, we, too, will follow. That’s why we have a season of Advent, to remind us of this once again because we all-too-easily forget.
There is no new road. Jesus has walked it for you and now leads you along the level path. Jesus is your Light (John 8:12) and your Salvation; He shines His light in the darkness (1 John 1:5). He shows you the way, for He is the Way and your Life (John 14:16), and in His light your eternal enemy is overcome.
When you think of the future in Christ, remember: “Wait for the LORD; be strong and courageous. Wait for the LORD!” May you continue to have a blessed Advent, in Christ Jesus, as you wait. Amen.
