Thank you, Tony, for that prayer.
I thought I would read this. When I hear such thorough prayers like that, I'm reminded of Ephesians chapter 3, which tells us, "Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all we ask or think." Isn't that good news?
I changed the name of the sermon this week. One of the things that I often do is that I don't get my sermon completed by the time I have to turn in the sermon title to Aaron to get the bulletin done. So I changed the name. Just if you're interested, I call this "King David's Humble and Aggressive Response to God's Amazing Grace."
As I read Psalm 16, I want you to notice God's Amazing Grace in the Old Testament nonetheless, and notice David's response. You'll notice one prayer; it's in the first verse. The rest of it is just things that David notices, and he writes down. It is certainly a humble and a very passionate and aggressive response to God's Amazing Grace.
Psalm 16, verses 1 through 11:
"A Miktam of David.
Preserve me, O God, for in you I take refuge.
I say to the Lord, 'You are my Lord; I have no good apart from you.'
As for the saints in the land, they are the excellent ones, in whom is all my delight.
The sorrows of those who run after another god shall multiply; their drink offerings of blood I will not pour out or take their names on my lips.
The Lord is my chosen portion and my cup; you hold my lot.
The lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; indeed, I have a beautiful inheritance.
I bless the Lord who gives me counsel; in the night also my heart instructs me.
I have set the Lord always before me; because he is at my right hand, I shall not be shaken.
Therefore my heart is glad, and my whole being rejoices; my flesh also dwells secure.
For you will not abandon my soul to Sheol or let your Holy One see corruption.
You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore."
A commentary I almost always read when I study the Psalms is Charles Spurgeon's "The Treasury of David." It's three volumes. I got it for three dollars, brand new. Somebody at our church back in the 80s didn’t want it, and he said, "Would you like Charles Spurgeon's 'The Treasury of David'?" I said yes. He said, "I'll give it to you for three dollars, a dollar a book." So I've still got it.
One of the things that it says about this psalm is that it calls this psalm "David's Jewel." Also, in "The Treasury of David," he quotes a man called Mr. Dale, and Mr. Dale calls this the "Golden Psalm." Mr. Dale wrote a little book on Psalm 16, and each of the chapter headings I thought I would repeat what Spurgeon recorded. These chapter headings of the Golden Psalm I thought were very instructive.
He says there's the seeking of the gold, the possessing of the gold, the testing of the gold, the valuing of the gold, the occupying of the gold, the reckoning of the gold, and the perfecting of the gold. All that just to say that this is a golden psalm; it's David's Jewel. It's always been one of my favorite psalms.
So let's take a quick summer excursion through this psalm and pluck just a few—we don't have time to pluck them all—but pluck a few of the delicious fruits off the trees as we stroll by.
Psalm 16:1: "Preserve me, O God, for in you I take refuge." That's a great prayer to remember. I was up north this week and just studying this and reading this. I must have prayed this a dozen times: "Preserve me, O Lord, for in you I take refuge."
You know, the world is a hard place. Even for us that live in suburbia and the outskirts of Detroit, life is still hard in different ways. In the Lord, we can take refuge, and that's what David was saying: "Preserve me, O Lord, for in you I take refuge."
David just gets straight to the point; he doesn't beat around the bush. We don't know exactly what's going on in David's life as he writes these words. We don't know whether an enemy is chasing him; we don't know whether he's bogged down with a personal sin. We don't really know, but he's obviously in need of two things as we read this prayer: he's in need of preservation, and he's in need of refuge. He's in need of a safe place.
In fact, taking refuge in God is a common theme in the Psalms; it's mentioned 25 different times in the Book of Psalms. David begins by declaring that there's nowhere else to go. I'm sure he, like many of us, has tried many different places to go to find these things, but none of them pan out in the long run. There's no one else to turn to for help of this magnitude.
He prays passionately and aggressively and begins this psalm with this humble and aggressive prayer: "Preserve me, O God, for in you I take refuge."
We started our worship service with a call to worship, which is the same theme that David has here in Psalm 16. Psalm 73 says, "Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you."
You know, just reading that this week and putting that in the call to worship and putting it here in the first point of the sermon, I realized I need that. I need to be humble and aggressive like David. I need my eyes opened up to this reality that I can't find what I desperately need anywhere else but in Christ alone. For the Christian, it would be seeking salvation and the help we need in Christ alone.
Psalm 16:2: David goes on to say, "I say to the Lord, 'You are my Lord; I have no good apart from you.'" Here, David expresses a total 100 percent dependence upon God. He doesn't hold anything back. He's seen his failures; he knows his own heart; he knows what he is capable of.
I don't know if this is before Bathsheba or after Bathsheba, but he knows that he's so capable of sin. Even though he's the anointed king of Israel, he has nothing to offer to God that would obligate God to bless him. He's come to understand that it's all by grace, and it's an amazing grace. That's why I named the sermon "King David's Humble and Aggressive Response to God's Amazing Grace."
Verses 3 and 4: "As for the saints in the land, they are the excellent ones, in whom is all my delight. The sorrows of those who run after another god shall multiply; their drink offerings of blood I will not pour out or take their names upon my lips."
See, as the Lord answered David's prayer for preservation and refuge, one of the things he did for us is he puts us in the midst of other believers, other like-minded people. For us, it's called the church. For David, it was in the midst of the saints in the land. He surrounds the hungry, God-fearing person with other believers, other like-minded followers of Almighty God. He does not leave you alone, although sometimes you think you are alone.
David had discovered that it was a great joy to be in godly fellowship with others. He said, "For the saints in the land, they are the excellent ones, in whom is all my delight." Just think right now of those godly individuals that God has placed you in fellowship with, that you can rejoice over and thank God for, for their encouragement, for their example, sometimes even for their correction.
But just the fact that he has placed you in the midst of godly people to help keep you in line, that you can laugh with and have joy with. It's certainly a New Testament thing that we call the fellowship of the saints. It's what happened right after the day of Pentecost.
Listen to how Acts 2 described it: "And all who believed were together and had all things in common. And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all as any had need. And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved."
The excellence of the fellowship of the saints is in stark contrast to verse 4, which follows it. There's the excellence of the saints versus the sorrow of the idolaters. The saints offer a community and a lineage of godliness; the world offers a community and lineage of godlessness.
Who are you hanging with? Which community of fellowship best defines you? William Gurnall said this: "Avoid unholy friendships; they will ruin the power of godliness. Stop pretending you cannot be among unholy people very long without defiling your soul, which the Holy Spirit has made pure."
Now, he's not talking about evangelizing the ungodly; he's talking about making ungodly communities your regular fellowship. It's the difference. Tim Chester said, "We think of holiness as giving up the pleasures of sin for some worthy but drab life. But holiness means recognizing that the pleasures of sin are empty and temporary while God is inviting us to magnificent, true, full, and rich pleasures that last forever."
I remember one of the things that God did for me. It's because he had to. When I became a Christian, it was like cutting the cord. If I had stayed in the fellowship circles that I was in, I just don't think I would have made it. It just cut the cord. I had to come out from among them.
Later, once I was established, once I got my feet settled, once I established my place in a new community, then I could relate to those that I had been friends with who were still living in the world. But I had to make sure my feet were firmly on the rock. I had to come out from among them before I could go back in their midst and share the gospel with them.
Verse 5: "The Lord is my chosen portion and my cup; you hold my lot." He's making these declarations to God about what God has done for him. He's not only acknowledging but affirming God's plan for his life. God's plans for David were huge. David was God's chosen king for the nation of Israel. David was God's choice to be the royal ancestor of Jesus, the Messiah, the Redeemer, and the eternal king of God's people.
But here you have in verse 5, David says, "God, you are my chosen portion; you are my cup; you hold my lot." It was a part of his confession, acknowledging all the good things that God had for him.
This verse, along with verse 6, the next one we're going to read, would have reminded David's Old Testament readers of the way that God divided up the promised land. All the 12 tribes—well, the Levites didn't have land; they had a temple and different places—but it would have reminded them how the boundaries were set for all the 12 sons of Jacob.
David affirms here God's wisdom and providence, that God was in charge. He writes in Psalm 16:6, "The lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; indeed, I have a beautiful inheritance."
Are you noticing King David's humble yet aggressive response to God's Amazing Grace in his life? God didn't just give an inheritance of land to the people of Israel; his providence and plan is worldwide. It extends all the way to Clarkston, Michigan, in the year 2023. We can say those same things to God about his plans and inheritance in our lives.
Listen to what Paul said and included in his sermon at Mars Hill in Athens in Acts 17. He says some amazing things about God's providential placing of people. Listen to what he says: "And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us. For in him we live and move and have our being, even as some of your own poets have said, 'For we are indeed his offspring.'
Being then God's offspring, we ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of man. The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed. And of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead."
God placed Israel, the tribes, exactly where they needed to be. He placed David right where he needed to be. He has placed you right where you need to be. A lot of times, we just go, "No," and we fight it and we resist it. David teaches us, "O God, you are my portion; you're my chosen portion; you are my cup; you are my lot."
Verse 7: "I bless the Lord who gives me counsel; in the night also my heart instructs me." There are many ways to bless the Lord. Here, David is doing what he is famous for, and that is worshiping the Lord—worshiping the Lord who gives him counsel and the Lord who teaches him in the night.
Interesting, the word for heart here is actually kidneys—also vital organs that must be working or we die. The heart pumps the blood through our systems; the kidneys work to cleanse the blood in our system. But what they mean when it says, "My heart instructs me," it means it's getting down to the nitty-gritty core of our being.
We opened the worship service this morning by singing, "Open the Eyes of My Heart, Lord, that I may see you high and lifted up." Elisha prayed that his servant would have his eyes opened up, that he would see that there were more with them than there were with the enemies of God. May God open our eyes that we may see that there are more with us than there are with them.
The last verses in Psalm 16: "I have set the Lord always before me; because he is at my right hand, I shall not be shaken. Therefore my heart is glad, and my whole being rejoices; my flesh also dwells secure. For you will not abandon my soul to Sheol or let your Holy One see corruption. You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore."
King David was telling his Old Testament readers something that they needed to know about Amazing Grace. He was telling them that there was more to this life than just the life they were living. There was more than just having your soul abandoned to death and the grave. There was more to existence than having your body rot away in the grave.
Somehow, someway, death was not the end; it was a doorway to something more. It was a passage to the right hand of God, and he called it "pleasures forevermore."
In their gospel sermons in the book of Acts, both Peter and Paul put the finishing touches on what David began with just a misty glimpse of in Psalm 16.
Listen to what Peter said as he quotes Psalm 16 in his famous Pentecost sermon in Jerusalem. He sees Psalm 16 as speaking of the resurrection of Christ. This is Acts 2:25-31:
"For David says concerning him, 'I saw the Lord always before me, for he is at my right hand that I may not be shaken. Therefore my heart was glad, and my tongue rejoiced; my flesh will also dwell in hope. For you will not abandon my soul to Hades or let your Holy One see corruption. You have made known to me the path of life, and you will make me full of gladness with your presence.'
Brothers, I may say to you with confidence about the patriarch David that he both died and was buried, and his tomb is with us to this day. But being therefore a prophet and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him that he would set one of his descendants on his throne, he foresaw and spoke about the resurrection of the Christ, that he was not abandoned to Hades, nor did his flesh see corruption."
That's what Psalm 16 is all about.
Then Paul also preaches Christ's resurrection from Psalm 16 as well. Therefore, he says also in another psalm, "He will not let your Holy One see corruption." For David, after he had served the purpose of God in his own generation, fell asleep and was laid with his fathers and saw corruption. But he whom God raised up did not see corruption.
Let it be known to you, therefore, brothers, that through this man forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you.
David saw it kind of in a fuzzy way; he knew something was there. Peter and Paul put the finishing touches on it for us today. We have laid out before us the death and the resurrection and the ascension of Christ.
My prayer this morning for us is that God would continue to open the eyes of our hearts to see God's Amazing Grace for us every day, step by step, that there are more with us than there are with them, that he would show us the path of life, and that he would show us the communities that we fellowship in, or his design for our godliness, for our inheritance, and for our lineage.
I'm going to invite Todd and Connie to come on up, Larry too. Adam, I normally sing the songs from the 1980s with the children. We're going to sing one with you, and I'm going to invite you to stand. I dropped a new song on them this morning, and I'm going to drop a new one on you. It's from Psalm 16, verses 9 and 11. I love this psalm, and I love this song. Maybe some of you might remember singing these little snippets from Psalm 16.
We'll sing the first verse a couple of times, and if you don't pick it up, at least you can listen, and we'll get it together, and then we'll come to the communion table.
on Nov 05, 2023
