Psalm 27

The Presence of God

When have you realized God was present? When did you yearn for God to be present?

An experience of God is addictive. We have a sense of overwhelming power and peace, a sense of our insignificance and overwhelming love. When we have such an experience, we might feel small, but we can just as easily feel that we are in good hands. With God, evil will not touch us.

When the experience is over, we feel at a loss. We want to be with God again. He becomes our focus, our goal, and our beloved. Without him, we feel incomplete. We want him, we need him.

Psalm 27 touched on these two experiences. 27:1-6 was a statement of the believer at the height of an experience with God. 27:7-14 was a prayer to return to his presence. The language of the believer (statement vs. prayer) has led some scholars to posit two poems were woven together to form the single psalm. Despite this theory, the change in language did reveal the presence-absence nature of the religious experience.

Psalm 27 began with two rhetorical questions. With God present, what did the psalmist fear? Despite the siege of the enemy, God would rescue the believer (especially the king) from the time of test. As the profane saying goes, I “might be up to my eye balls in alligators,” but I will still place my trust in the Lord. (27:1-4)

Where did the ancient Hebrew believe God dwelt? In the Temple. This was a place of divine presence and, so, safety. A topography of the Temple and its environs might help in understanding 27:4-6. If you have ever seen a picture of the Old City in Jerusalem, you saw the Dome of the Rock monument dominate the landscape. This Islamic shrine approximately stands where the Temple stood, at the high point of the city built in rough terrain. In the time before Jesus, Herod rebuild the Temple and his palace (adjacent to the Temple). The Temple with the palace were built to be easily defended as well as easily seen by defenders to strengthen their spirits. (It is interesting to note that Jews fiercely defended the Temple against the Romans in 70 A.D. after the walls of Jerusalem were breached; when the Temple was mysteriously set on fire and was quickly consumed, resistence to the invaders ceased.) The security that the Temple mount offered allowed the king to worship in defiance of a siege (27:5-6). “Tent” (27:6) was another name for the Temple; during the Exodus, the tent was a forerunner to the Temple.

27:7 marked a turn in tone. The psalmist now sought the presence of God in the “dark night of the soul.” Still, he had hope that God would take care of him, even if he was rejected by his clan (rejection by parents would mean a rejection by extended family in ancient Semitic culture; 27:10). He prayed for a calmer existence and rescue from enemies (notice the change in tone between 27:5-6 and 27:12). The psalm ended on a note of longing for God to be near and of hope for his eventual arrival (27:13-14).

The religious experience shifts from a realization God is present to a yearning for Him to be near. Psalm 27 was a response to the two extremes of the religious experience. Like the psalm, our prayer life should be built on those two emotions. In fact, we should pray to focus on the perceived presence and absence of God.

How have you responded to God’s presence or absence this week? How has your prayer focused upon these experiences?