“Blessed are those who have learned to acclaim you, who walk in the light of your presence, Lord. They rejoice in your name all day long; they celebrate your righteousness. For you are their glory and strength, and by your favor you exalt our horn.” (Psalm 89:15-17)
Notice the strong words in this passage that point to a lived experience: walk, rejoice, and celebrate. The experience of God’s people that the psalmist points to is not merely an intellectual enterprise. This is an experience that results in rejoicing and celebration. There is a real peace that becomes the real experience of God’s people. When they walk in the “light of His presence” they not only are walking in a way that is in keeping with His nature, they are also having a real experience of the warmth of His face being turned toward them. Just as we love to feel the warm glow of the sun on our neck on a winter’s day, so we also love to feel the warmth of His gaze on us as we walk in His light. And the point seems to be that this is a real experience. In this walk there is an experience of real glory and strength. When the psalmist refers to “our horn” being exalted, horn is a symbol for strength, and God becomes for His people a real strength to weather the trials of life.
What all this does is take the walk of faith out of the merely intellectual realm where we “believe in God,” and it makes it a much deeper encounter of a real God who has real effects in our lives. Today’s sermon is about faith as seen in three stories in the Gospel of Mark (chapters 5 & 6), and what we’ll see there is that faith is so much more than simply believing in God, it is trusting God through Jesus. There is a world of difference between a merely mental exercise of believing certain truths about God and trusting in God’s ability. Biblical faith obviously includes both believing certain truths about God and trusting in God’s ability. And what the Bible assures us about such biblical faith is that God will be the glory and strength for people who have such faith. Biblical faith will result in a real experience that will be a self-confirming belief. Real faith is never content to simply mentally agree with certain statements about God, rather real faith will always reach out in trusting faith to “touch Jesus” and experience our real God … and He most assuredly will act powerfully in our lives. In the words of our text today, He will save us.