Life Secrets - Ps 16

Well, turn please to Psalm 16. And by the way, thank you, Magañas, for leading music. We very much appreciate it. Psalm 16, like I said this morning, I was going to call this sermon Life Hacks, and I just couldn't bring myself to do it. It was just too cool, too hip for me to do. I'm not that cool of a guy, but there are some life principles in these verses that are extremely helpful. And you wonder sometimes if something is really, really simple if it will land right. Sometimes a passage like this has— there is some interpretive work that needs to be done. We still have to do hermeneutics in this passage because there's things— there's gaps to bridge by knowing what the text says. But the principles in this text are really simple. They're really basic. This is not high-level theology to apply in our lives. It's very basic. But that is usually where we tend to miss things, where we can miss things in the very easy simple things, right? That's why the Lord institutes something like communion and baptism so that we can always keep those main things obvious. Well, you do learn over the years, for example, that people can tend to take simple things and make them complicated or say they know things or things are unimportant. And one of those is like the young earth, you know, the idea that, well, that's not all that important anymore. That's not something we should be fighting for. I actually had somebody that used to be a part of this church and what we believe that said that to me, that The old theologians wouldn't even argue over whether the earth was young or old, you know. And it's that kind of thinking where people think something isn't important that makes people also think things are too important.

For example, like whatever a miktam is. It's the superscription of this. This type of literature that we're about to look at in Psalm 16 is a miktam. And if you read 10 people, you'll get 14 opinions on what a miktam is. And then you'll also get the varying degrees of certainty, man, that people are certain about something that you can't be certain about. And a miktam is one of those. So we do not know what a miktam is conclusively. The miktam could actually deal with the type of song it is. It could actually deal with the structure of what it is. It could deal with the instrumentation. We don't really know. But whatever it is, it's a song because we know it's in Israel's hymnal, the Book of Psalms. We know that David wrote Psalms, not all of them, but he wrote this one. And we know that often a theme in David is deliverance when in trouble. And this definitely has some deliverance in it, some preservation, some help in it. It's not as heavy or weighty or as urgent as other Psalms. I would think of this one, you know, you hear me often say that that Psalm might be in a minor key, but I think this Psalm is probably in a major key. You know, it has a couple of turns in it, but it's more positive, it's more encouraging. There is something that happens in this Psalm that I was thinking about this week because I've been— I did it actually at the Valentine's banquet, and Asher was not having it. I was singing songs to the kids and about the kids. I was up here with the guitar, so Sorry, Abraham, I was using your guitar up here. I actually stole it from Valentino. Anyway, I was up here with the guitar singing songs to the kids and making songs up for the kids, the church kids, right? And I always do that for Joanna.

I'm always making up songs for Joanna and just making things up. And I went down the line as I was singing, I think I asked Asher, hey, do you want me to sing a song to you? And he was like, no, he was not having it. He didn't want any part of it. He didn't want a song about him. It was probably good too, because I don't know what rhymes with Asher. You would have to— speaking of, by the way, I got a couple of texts this afternoon that were What was it? What did you say, Alexander? Honor the master, glorify the pastor. Honor the pastor, glorify the master. And Becky had one too. So yeah, people were giving me rhymes for the end of that verse, that passage this morning. I appreciated that. They were sweet. So I make up songs all the time. I sing songs. My kids know this. And even sometimes in situations where you shouldn't have songs, and I won't say any more than that. I don't want to incriminate myself. But I've made songs like for bedtime. The kids could probably right now sing the bedtime song, even though Pearl just turned 20. Like, it's time for little kids to go to bed. So songs can be important. It's how you learn things, how you learn the ABCs. It's how you remember things, Happy Birthday songs that everybody sings, right? Well, something happens in this psalm that is interesting, and you might want to think about it this week, is do you sing to yourself? I don't mean by yourself. I mean to yourself, because David in a song is going to sing to himself.

You'll see it in a second when he talks about his soul singing something internally. So I don't know, what kind of songs would you make up internally? Are you the kind of person that would make up negative, sad songs internally, like life is falling apart and I'm not very happy? Are you the kind of person that says, "I have a lot to be thankful for and I'm very blessed," and you sing those songs? Well, I'll leave that up to you. But it does say, and Paul says in Ephesians, "Speaking to one another in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, singing and making melody Where do you make the melody? It says in your heart, but you should try to make it out here too, right, to sing in key and sing along correctly. But melody is important to the Lord. And when we get there in verse 2, you'll see it. And maybe you can take something away from things you might want to sing to yourself, the kind of things you sing internally. Let's pray.

Father, as we now look at Psalm 16, it's so rich even though it's simple. It's one of those that is pretty graspable. It doesn't take a ton of work to understand what it's saying.. But the depth of what it means and the things that it could do for our hearts and encouragement, I think all of us could probably use it. I know I could. It's in fact convicting to read these kind of psalms sometimes for me because they're so simple that there's almost zero excuse to not leave strengthened by them. So help us be strengthened and encouraged. Maybe even think about the things we say and sing to ourselves so they might be more in line with what David does here. And we'll thank you for whatever glory you get and comfort we get, in Jesus' name, amen.

Well, like I said, it was going to be life hacks, but I don't want to do that. I'm not trying to be too clever. So in each of these situations are aspects of life. And the first thing you see in the very first verse is this, that David lives a life of trust. And it says that a miktam of David, and he says, "Preserve me, O God, for in you I put my trust." I've always been struck at the confidence of these kind of prairie prayers— I was going to say prayer requests, but requests for deliverance. I'm always struck by how confident David is. Like, there's zero hesitation. David does not hesitate at all when he goes to the Lord. He says, "Preserve me." He tells God what to do. But David can do that because of what he said next, is that he trusts the Lord. Like, how can you not preserve me? I trust you. So I think it is powerful that David starts off so confidently, so assured that God is going to preserve him. And it is because he trusts him. Now, there are things that are uncertain.

There's a lot of things that are uncertain— the stock market and your health and the world we live in. But David seems very, very certain. "I trust you. I'm going to assume that you are trustworthy so that I will be preserved. Since you're trustworthy, I will be preserved." But he is saying it. He's saying it very matter-of-factly. I can tell you that that is not indicative of my prayer life. But I can also tell you that I want it to be. I would like to be praying like David sings here. "Preserve me. Take care of me. Protect me. Keep close to me." We'll get more to the closeness in a bit here. Verse 2, here it is. "O my soul, you have said." You got it? So who is doing the saying? The soul is. But who is he talking to? Himself. So usually if people are talking to themselves, you think there might be something wrong with them. But David is talking to himself. "O my soul, you have said..." Now, before I go any further, especially for any Hebrew students in the class, there's a whole bunch of Yahwehs in this Psalm. And I often say it, but it really comes into play in a Psalm like Psalm 16. So when you see the capital L-O-R-D in your translation, if it does that, I'll try to point it out every time tonight because in this case, it really fits the way David is praying. So whenever God's name is used, usually in the Psalms, and I think it's safe to say almost always, I say it all the time, please don't hear it as a broken record because it is very precious when you understand it. Yahweh is God's proper name.

It is His proper name. It is not a title. It is a name like your name. My name is Johnny. But I have the title Dad. Got it? My proper name is Johnny. God's proper name is Yahweh. Now, you could say Jehovah, but it's actually more accurate Yahweh because the actual verb itself, Yahweh, I Am, the sound is Yuh. Okay, it has the— it's an I in front of it, not a J. So it's more accurate to say Yahweh. But every time the psalmists use Yahweh, almost every single time, they are drawing attention to the I Am of Exodus chapter 3. Who do I tell Pharaoh? When I say to Pharaoh, I am here, who do I say sent me? In chapter 3 and chapter 6. And what does God tell Moses? You will tell them I AM sent you, right? And that's the word Yahweh, I AM. So when you think of the name of Yahweh, when you think of his proper name, you have to think of all it encompasses when it comes to him saying, "I will deliver my people. I am their God in covenant.

They are my people in covenant." So you can even think of his name as a covenant-keeping designation. When he says, "I am," he's totally self-existent. He's eternal. It's theological. His name has theology built into it because it's speaking to his eternal existence. That's all built into his name. So when you see capital L-O-R-D and you see Yahweh, don't just think name. You can think personal name. That's okay to think that, but think all of it. Think covenant-keeping God. Think self-existent one. Think the one who delivers his people. All of that is built into his name. So when I say that, and you see now David just said, "Preserve me, O God." That first one is not Yahweh. But here it is in verse 2, "O my soul, you have said to Yahweh," to the Lord, to the covenant-keeping, self-existent God who loves me, who I'm in a relationship with, "You are my—" What does it say next in your Bible? 'Lord,' this is Adonai. This is a title for master. This is a title for king, for ruler. So, 'O my Yahweh, O my soul, you have said to Yahweh, "You are my master."' Then the next phrase, this is where the interpretation comes in. 'My goodness is nothing apart from you.' I know you Calvinists want to jump right in there with your Calvinism and say, 'That's total depravity.' It's not what it's saying. In this case, he is saying he does have goodness. David is not saying, "I don't have goodness." He's saying, "I do. Anything good I have—" and I don't think he necessarily means moral goodness.

I think what he means is, "Anything good I have is meaningless apart from you. So no matter what I get in this earth that might be called good—blessings, benefits, money, relationships, happiness, right? Whatever I might get in this world, if I don't have you, it is worthless. That's what David is saying. He's saying, I put my trust in you, and my soul has said to you, you are my master, you're my king. It's enough for me to serve you. I am content with serving you. If I have nothing else and I have you, then I'm okay. But if every good thing I could have, if I don't have you, it's a waste of time. That's what he's saying. It's also true, by the way, doctrinally and morally, that you don't have any goodness apart from the Lord, but that's not the main idea here. This is the whole theme that he's saying is, "Deliver me. I trust You. I'm close to You. I love You." And I even tell myself, here in verse 2, I tell myself, "You're my God." I'm talking to myself that saying, "Soul, tell the Lord that He is your God." You know? And His goodness, nothing I have is worth anything if I don't have You. That does include salvation or any other thing. Sometimes we put the emphasis, don't we, on salvation as the highest virtue. So we say, "What the most important thing is that somebody is saved." And the answer that I always give to that is, "No, it isn't." Salvation is not the most important thing. Salvation is a means to an end of glorifying God. Glorifying God is the most important thing, and salvation is what it is because you can now glorify God. It has a result. The result is not heaven. The result is being in the presence of God. And that sounds like David really understands that. Like, you're my God, you're close to me. Verse 3, as for the saints who are on the earth, they are the excellent ones in whom is all my delight. Their sorrows shall be multiplied who hasten after another god. Their drink offerings of blood I will not offer, nor take up their names on my lips. Again, I said this isn't an urgent psalm like the others. It's— there isn't a— seemingly anyway. Oppressing weight on David's shoulders or of drama or fear or struggles or anything like that.

But he does definitely mention trouble here, the enemies or the people who don't trust the true God. I do want you to first see that when he says that the saints, the excellent ones on the earth are the ones in whom he delights, that means that David loves the people that God loves. In this case, it's probably the people he rules over as their king. The people of Israel and his nation, right, citizens and his fellow Jews. But I also think there's a principle there that he's saying in song, the people I love love the Lord. Those are my kind of people, right? Like we all— what do we call David? The man after God's own heart. Well, David is saying the people after God's own heart are my kind of people. Anybody that loves the Lord, they delight in the Lord, they Praise the Lord, the saints, the ones that you have chosen. I delight in them. I love that there are people that love God. And I can tell you the converse of that makes me crazy is how many people blaspheme God. I get discouraged by how many people don't acknowledge him. And you pour your heart out, you share the gospel, and you pray for them, and it happens over and over again where people keep telling me stories and we keep hearing of prayer requests of people that we're just sharing the gospel with constantly, or family members that you're pleading to and trying to get them to see the Lord. It breaks your heart when they don't, right? Well, then shouldn't it be true that when you get to be around people who do love Him, who do want to please Him, that they delight— your soul delights in them, that you are happy to know them, to be with them? I'm so thankful that I have my friends and family and church family and the people who serve the Lord. Well, David says he delights in them. But then he goes and says things aren't good for people who follow other gods. Says sorrow comes upon them, it's multiplied in them. And then David says something interesting.

Now, don't take this as a foregone conclusion from David. David says, "Their drink offerings of blood I will not offer." You might think, "Well, of course, of course not." Well, you do know that idolatry was a huge problem in Israel. Over and over again, when you see the unfaithfulness of Israel, it is almost always based in idolatry, always going after other gods. It's the thing that plagues Israel over and over again. If you do any Old Testament study, The sin of the Old Testament is idolatry, going after other gods. Why do you think the Lord put that as number 1 in His commandments? Why? Because people are prone to it. Calvin says we are an idol factory of idols. We make idols. If we can't find something to worship, we'll make something to worship. And he is saying, they have their offerings, they have their pagan rituals, I'm not going to be a part of that. Not only am I not going to be a part of that, look what he says next. 'Nor take up their names on my lips.' I'm not even going to talk about them, the people who go after other gods. Now, I don't think this means for us apologists that we don't name false teachers, or we don't name heresies, or we don't name people that are against the gospel. I don't think that's what he's saying. I think he means in a favorable way. I think he means I'm not going to name their name as though they're all right, as though they're my friends. Or as though they're the kind of people I approve of. I'll be happily naming my friends and brothers in Israel who follow the Lord. Those are the ones I delight in.

Those are my people. But the other people, I don't delight in them, so I'm not going to promote their names. I'm not going to speak of them as though they're all right with the Almighty. They're not all right, and they're drinking blood offerings and in pagan rituals. So I love the people that love God and the people that God loves, and I don't mingle with the others. It's an easy application there, isn't it? I don't have anything in my notes, but people sometimes will say, "Well, didn't Jesus go and meet with sinners and tax collectors and go in the bars and rescue people from their sin?" That is true, but He did not stay in the bar and drink. He did not go where they were and then do what they did. He rescued them out of their background and environments. So when you see Jesus mingling with sinners, keep in mind He's on a rescue mission. Not on a stay with them in their sin mission. I think David is hinting at something like that here. Though we may live in Israel and everybody's supposed to be worshiping Yahweh and honoring him, there are some people that don't, and those people are not the people I'm going to associate with. You might even say this is an early example of the doctrine of separation, where David is saying, I don't do what they do. And doesn't that sound like the early Psalms, that he doesn't walk in the path and sit in the seat and discuss things with the scornful. Sounds similar to that. Now, how do you have a content life?

Let's get that lesson here from verse 5. "O Lord," do you see it? There's your capital if your Bible does it. O Yahweh, the all-sufficient, self-existent, covenant-keeping, eternal one. "You are my portion," or you are the portion of my inheritance, and my cup. You maintain my lot. There's an interesting interpretive thing here that is pretty certain, but I don't want to skip too fast and miss the part where he is saying to his God. If you wanted to paraphrase this, David is saying something like this. What he said already, he's amplifying here. You are enough. It is enough that I have you. Take away everything else. I count all things as rubbish compared to the knowledge of God the Son, right? The idea of Jesus, of the Son of God. So I think this is David's version of that. "You are the portion of my inheritance and my cup. You maintain my lot." The cup obviously has to do with sustenance. We know the language of like, "cup runneth over" and things like that. But then comes this very interesting phrase. You would be surprised how much in my study I spent on "you maintain my lot." Do you know— this was news to me, what I'm about to tell you. I did not know, and I feel like I should have known it, that every time you use the word "lot," like a lot that your property is on, it has to do with casting lots. Did you know that? Every time. That's where the word comes from.

Now you might be wondering, what does that have to do with anything? Well, first of all, what a lot is, if you didn't know, you and I, what do we think of when we think of a lot, of casting lots? Gambling. But what physical thing do we think of? Dice. Yeah, that's our version, right? The dice, the 6-sided dice. That is not what Israel would have been using to cast lots. By the way, they're not certain what their lots looked like, but there's a pretty good idea. There's a couple of different versions. There would have been like a, You could have a platform that you throw something on and wherever it lands is a number or a letter. They had smooth stones that had lettering on them. So you would throw the stones and then you might say that however many of this letter come up or this number come up or whatever, who gets the highest number. It's just like the way people play games or gamble with dice, right? They had all manner of systems. They were pretty simple, but it had to do with— they would have these little flat pieces of wood with letters and stuff on them so that they could throw them. And however they landed would be— they would make a determination based on how they landed. So you can just think of dice. It's okay to think of those. But you should know that that wasn't the ultimate thing. But what you would do is you would say, you and I find this plot of land. It's not a lot yet.

I mean, when I say not a lot, I don't mean a big amount. We're talking about the word lot in our context, right? So we find a plot of land. And we both found it at the same time. And now we have to divide that land up. How much do you get and how much do I get? Well, you might think it's 50/50, but they might cast lots to see how much of the property is yours. That's why it became a lot, because you cast lots to figure out how big was your lot. And I did not know that. I did not know that that is how things used to be, because you can have land without it being a lot. You know that, right? So all lots are land, but not all land is lots. It's kind of like a rectangle. Right? A square is a rectangle, but not all rectangles are squares. Right? Well, land is like that. So the reason I bring that up here and the reason I think it's important and not just a nice bit of trivia is David is essentially saying, "However things have fallen, however things have went, by what other people would call chance, by just how things worked out, I'm okay with." This is contentment. This is David's version of, I've had, I've been abased and I've learned and I've abounded, right? And David is saying like, whatever God gives me, just like what you might call random chat, what you might just say, this is to use another gambling phrase, which we don't believe in gambling, but to use the phrase, this is the hand I was dealt. You know, people say those kinds of things. This, whatever I get is all right, but it's not just all right. It's all right in a context of, Yahweh being his portion. Because I already have the most important thing, which is you, anything else, how do we say it, is gravy. If I have you, I have everything I need. And so wherever the lot lands and says you get this tiny little piece of land, I say, that's all right, I have the Lord and I'll have a little piece of land too. Or you throw the lots, you cast the lots and you get a giant piece of land and Maybe you were born into a really good family with money and those kind of things. Hey, I'll take that too, but I have the Lord.

I have the important thing is the Lord, not the lot. So whatever size lot I have by the casting of lots, you maintain that. You were the one in charge of it. You orchestrated what I have. The way— the things that— the way— the place I was born, you guys always talk about like it's like winning the lottery to be born in our country. To be born in the United States, even now. Even now. And I tell all these new parents, I tell them all, don't you dare believe the negative garbage out there. Don't you dare believe. It is a blessing to have children and to raise children in the Lord. Don't you dare act like it's a scary thing to raise children in this world. No, no, no, they'll get to be lights, and the Lord will shine in the darkness with your family. That's the way I think. That's why I'm back there singing to my little granddaughter that hymn earlier. The first time I sang right in her face, like, do you like that song? Well, maybe not if Grandpa sings it, but Just this idea of praising the Lord and trying to instill it in your family so that they can stand and shine. You do that when you're born with blessing, but you can also do that when you're born in other places where people don't win the lottery. In the darkness and in the Middle East and the places where people are hiding and sheltering, they will say, "We have the Lord. We're okay. We might not have what they have over there in America, but we have the Lord." And that's what David is saying. Yahweh is enough for him. And then he says similar, he extends that idea, he continues that idea in verse 6, "The lines have fallen to me in pleasant places," and you know that means property lines, "yes, I have a good inheritance." David, that wasn't always true of David, was it? Because David, there are times where he's running for his life.

There are times when his own son, we just talked about this on Wednesday night, where his own son had turned against him. There were times when things were not good for him when he's hiding out in the wilderness to try to get away from the people trying to kill him. So there were times where David did not have— he wasn't in his palace. He didn't have the property lines around him. He was running for his life. But I think David would have meant it wherever he was at. If I'm out here in the desert, if I'm out here hiding in the river, if I'm out here with the sheep, wherever David was, I think he believed what he's saying here, that whatever lines you have drawn for me, my lot. Those are good. I'm content with those. The lines have fallen to me in pleasant places. And yes, it is true that David had a good inheritance because of the promises of God. But anybody that has God as their God gets good promises, right? We all have good promises when God is our God. We don't have to have David's lineage and know that Jesus is coming in our family or, you know, a kingdom and a throne forever and ever. But David did have that. So I think of this, even though that's a beautiful phrase there in verse 6, that the lines have fallen to me in pleasant places. Yes, I have a good inheritance. Even though it's beautiful, it's also in a context of a man's life who's very realistic, that David had not always had only good times. He wasn't— this wasn't just poetry. He wasn't just saying this on Valentine's Day or something like that. He meant it. He meant his life was good and that God had been good to him. Now, what does he do? What's a good reaction, a good healthy response if God is good to you and you know he's been good to you and he's given you enough with which to be content, David gives us a really wonderful response in verse 7.

"I will bless Yahweh." There it is again. "I will bless the Lord who has given me counsel. My heart also instructs me in the night seasons. I will bless the Lord who has taught me." Now, everything that David said up to this point, it could have been assumed that David had a good counselor, right? Like, you assume a guy that's talking like verses 1 through 6, has good influences in his life. But then you get to verse 7 and you find out, yeah, he had Yahweh himself counseling him, just like we do with the Word of God and the Holy Spirit, right? We have a good counselor and we have our advocate, Jesus. But I like the lesson here. And you notice it says, "I will bless the Lord." Blessing is a weird word. It's one of those words— and I don't mean to be silly all the time, but it is funny to me when it happens. That someone will ask how you're doing, you'll say, "Well, I'm blessed." Right? You say that, "I'm blessed." But when we say it in like super duper uber spiritual terms, we'll say "blessed." No one ever says "blessed" when they read the Sermon on the Mount. "Blessed are the meek." They always say "blessed." You know, they make it more— I don't know, maybe it's more Christian if it has two syllables. I don't know. But there are a couple of different ways to think of blessing. Okay? One of the main ways that we understand is when God blesses us, That is Him adding something to us, right?

That's something, a gift or some favor of God being given to us. That's one way of seeing it, that God gives you a blessing, the blessing of family, the blessing of health, the blessing of food, the blessing, right? And we even ask God to bless the food we're about to eat because He gave it to us, right? It's a blessing to us and we're asking Him to bless it. Then there's another blessing that you find, and that is, by the way, this is not, heavy-duty theology right now. I'm speaking patriarchally, not technically. Okay, I'm not going full theology on the meanings of the words used for blessed. I just want to give you the concepts, not the technical meanings. So the first thing is the blessing that God adds to you. He gives you something. The second idea is that God approves of you. He approves of you. That when Jesus says, "Blessed are the peacemakers"— see, two syllables— when he says that, he is saying Not only does God give them blessing, but he's saying that God approves of them in a way to give them blessing. That was one of the first sermons I ever heard pastor preach, was that idea. Every one of those blessed, you could almost translate, approved is the peacemaker, approved are those who mourn, meaning that God sees their right heart and approves of them and gives them a blessing because of that. And then the other one is like this one, and you definitely see this one more in the New Testament. It is to say something good about. It's like favored words. It's like a compliment or a— well, compliment's a good word. That's kind of the word I'm thinking of in our language. That if in this case where David says, "I will bless the Lord," obviously David can't add anything to Yahweh. God owns everything, so he can't add anything to Him, right? And obviously God doesn't ask for anybody's approval.

Like, are you happy with me, David? Can you please tell me if you're happy with me? Obviously God doesn't do that. So what is it then? It is him ascribing goodness or saying good things to the Lord. A good word. I'm saying good things. I want the Lord to hear me, like we heard this morning in the book of Hebrews, the sacrifice of our lips, the praise and thanksgiving. That's what David is saying here. I will bless the Lord. I will say good things about him. That you're going to know what I think about God because I'm going to say it out loud. That's the idea. I'm going to make it known that Yahweh has given me counsel. And then that also, the next part says, "My heart also instructs me in the night seasons." So he's already talked to himself back in verse 2, and now he's saying, "My heart teaches me at night." What do you think it's teaching him? Don't forget the Lord. Trust the Lord. You're putting your head on the pillow at night. You might be anxious. You might be frustrated. You might have to get up and go to a job you don't like the next day very much or whatever, right? 'But no, no, no, you trust the Lord. You trust him.' And his heart— you can almost imagine David's heart. Like, say this miktam was written around the time of, I don't know, Saul chasing him or whatever. And he's hurt, 'Man, people want to kill me. My own son has turned against me in the Absalom ordeal.

These things are happening with me.' And you might think, well, that's what he's thinking about. And then he remembers, 'Wait a second, the Lord's my counselor. God loves me. He's my God. He's going to take care of me.' And you can imagine his heart saying, 'Take it easy. You trust the Lord.' He's singing to himself and he's talking to himself. Again, most people do that, you might wonder about their mental condition, but not David. He's doing it right. So I'm going to bless Him when I'm awake and I'm going to listen when I'm at night, when it's nighttime. I'm going to say good things about Him when I'm alert and awake and sharp, and I'm going to listen to Him teach me and remind me of the good counsel in the night seasons when I'm asleep. And then he's already said, as a matter of fact, I will bless the Lord. Doesn't sound like he's saying, "I will bless the Lord if everything goes right." "Oh, I'm going to bless the Lord," right? Doesn't Job do that in the very worst of worst times? He gives, He takes away, and then what does he say? "Blessed be the name of the Lord." Job says that, right? So this isn't an only when things are good kind of blessing. Verse 8, "I have set Yahweh always before me; because He is at my right hand, I shall not be moved. Therefore my heart is glad, and my glory rejoices; My flesh will rest in hope.

Now this is really interesting. This is really interesting because usually you see us or somebody else in honor at the right hand of the Lord. Like Jesus ascends to the right hand of the Lord. Did you notice who's at whose right hand in these verses? Did you catch it? Who is at whose right hand in these verses? I have set the Lord always before me. The idea is wherever the Lord is, that's where my attention's going. Got it? So he's not moving the Lord. It isn't that the Lord is over here and he's moving the Lord to in front of him. That's what we think we do. Well, Lord, this is the direction I want to go, and I don't know if it's what you want, so the way I'm gonna try to fix that is force you to get in line with my direction. That's not what David's doing. He's saying, I'm gonna calibrate myself, I'm gonna move myself, I'm gonna adjust myself to wherever the Lord is, and now he's before me. Got it? So now he says Yahweh is in front of him, before him. And then it says, because he is at my right hand, I shall not be moved. Wait a second, David, are you so arrogant that you're saying the Lord's honor place is at your right hand? Because that's what the right hand means, it's the place of honor. Do you mean to tell me that you think that the Lord sitting at your right hand is him honoring you? And do you know what that means? Yes, the Lord honors David.

That is what it means. That's how confident David is when I have so trusted you, I have so loved you, I have so wanted to live for you that I know you not only maintain my lot, I know that I can bless you. And I've so put my confidence in you, I so trust you, I so know that you are my portion I know you will honor me. That is not arrogance or pride at all. That is David understanding the kind of people that God honors. And it's okay if you honor the Lord and you walk with the Lord to expect him to honor you. It's okay to do that. We're not done though. There's something that will come here at the end where that coin will get flipped and we'll get the other side of it in a second. So hang in there. It doesn't stop there. But it does say he's at my right hand. It also says I shall not be moved. The idea of hand always in the Old Testament The Hebrew word is yad, yad, if you have never heard that word. That word almost always is a symbol of power. If I say I'm going to do it by my hand, it means I'm going to do it with power or strength. So he's saying that the Lord is honoring him by sitting at his right hand, but he's also saying the Lord is his strength at his right hand, that the Lord is where he gets his strength. And that's why he says, "Because the Lord is my strength, because He's my right hand, because He honors me." He gives me my strength. I have hope. I'm glad. My glory rejoices. Then it says, my flesh will rest in hope. Now, he just said earlier in the night seasons that his soul instructs him, or he instructs himself in the night seasons. Does this mean rest as in sleep? Or does it mean rest as in dead? When he says, my flesh will rest in hope, it's very likely he means death because of what comes next.

So he's not only saying in my day-to-day In my activity, I trust you. In my sleep, I trust you. It probably means in death. If all things work out in such a way that I have to die, I'm going to trust you then too. I'm going to honor you no matter what. So it sure seems like David has a really strong understanding of the dynamic between him and the Lord. David knows David really well, and David knows the Lord really well. It doesn't seem like he's out of balance where he's saying, I'm really good and the Lord is fortunate to have me. He's also not so out of balance where he's saying, "The Lord is too high, too mighty, too lifted up that I can't call on Him or count on Him or throw myself at Him and expect Him to answer." He has that balance that understands, "I'm coming before the Lord that I know I have nothing good apart from You. But because I have You, You're enough and You have chosen to be in a relationship with me. You have chosen to redeem me and make me Your person. If You want to be in a relationship with me," it's almost like David is saying, "then so be it." Then let's be in a relationship. Then I love you and you love me. And I think it's beautiful. I love David's heart. Now we get to verse 10, and you know these verses. These verses are quoted in the New Testament. Verse 10: For you will not leave my soul in Sheol. That's why I think the last phrase is death. Nor will you allow your Holy One to see corruption. Who is that quoted about in the New Testament? Jesus, right?

The other Son of David, the other David family member. Verse 11, you will show me the path of life. In your presence is fullness of joy. At your right hand are pleasures forevermore. Whose right hand is there? How do you see it? So David can say the Lord's at my right hand, but he's also saying I am at his right hand and I honor him. Got it? So God gives me honor and strength by being close to me, but I also honor honor Him, where He gives us pleasure is at His right hand. Now, did you know that— man, that might surprise some Baptists, some conservative Baptists. You know, we're the stuffy frozen chosen, right? We only ever think of judgment and we only ever think of strictness and legalism and ritual, right? That's what we believe. We don't believe in pleasure, right? We're not supposed to have fun. We're not supposed to enjoy things. We're supposed to be Christians and stuffy and have it be down in the mouth, right? That's what the world thinks of us, that if you become a Christian, yeah, you have to lose all fun. You have to lose all vitality. You have to now be downtrodden and show yourself. You need to go invest in sackcloth and ashes, you know, so that you can show that you're really miserable because your religion takes away all the good stuff. That is so not true. Look at what it says. First of all, it says that David recognizes of himself— before this is about Jesus, it's about David. So David is saying, "You will not leave me in Sheol." Sheol can mean hell. It can mean. Sometimes the word Sheol is in context about hell, the way we understand hell or darkness. But in this case, it's clear that its other meaning, which is very common, is death, the grave. So Sheol here is the grave.

So, "You will not leave me in the grave." nor will your Holy One see corruption. You allow me to see corruption. You're not going to let me go and be decomposed. You're not going to let me die. And then, of course, this is applied to Jesus later because he didn't decompose in the grave. The Lord rose him from the dead. This is applied to Jesus later. But for David, he's saying, whatever happens, I know you're going to take care of me. In other words, if I die, if my flesh rests, my flesh is going to rest in hope because I know you're not done with me when I die. That's what he's saying. I have a future. There's an afterlife. You have a plan for me in eternity. So he's saying, you will not leave me in death here. That's what he's saying. I know that ultimately you chose me and you have plans for me and you will not let me just go and become what I always say, what PJ always says, is maggot food. And then it says, you will show me the path of life. I'm going to walk after you. You'll show me. You'll light my way. That your word is a lamp to my feet so that everywhere I step is guided. Oh, your word tells me to go here, I'll go there. Oh, I see your word tells me to go here, I'll go there. But it's a path of life. We talk about a life hack. How about the life hack of having life? So the path is lit and in your presence is fullness of joy. So we can have joy. Now you know this, you all know this already.

This is not all that high-level doctrine, but joy and sorrow can coexist. You know this, right? Happiness and sorrow cannot coexist because happiness is circumstantial. Things have to go good for you to be happy. But joy and sorrow can coexist. You can have joy knowing God is in control, knowing that your future is secure while you're going through grief and sorrow. This is the most painful thing I could ever go through, but I love the Lord and he's going to take care of me, and I can rejoice in than that. So joy here, in your presence is fullness of joy, does not necessarily mean gleeful happiness, cheer, right? It doesn't necessarily mean that. It means joy. But then it says at your right hand are— there's that word, that crazy word right in your Bible— pleasures. That's in your Bible. Did you know that? I don't always agree with John Piper on everything. In fact, I think this subject of his, he kind of goes a little overboard on it. If you want to my honest opinion. I love the man, but when he talks about Christian hedonism— have you ever heard John Piper talk about Christian hedonism? This is what he's talking about. He doesn't mean we should have fleshly sinful pleasure. He means that we should find our pleasure in knowing God. We should have pleasure because of the good things He gives us and because of our salvation. So John Piper does talk about pleasure, hedonism, Christian hedonism, meaning of all people, shouldn't we be the most Happy and pleased because we get the best things from the Lord. We have the Lord Himself. He's our portion. But then He gives us good things too, like chocolate and things like that. Like probably ice cream tonight. It's Pearl's birthday. That's why we're eating ice cream. We have to. So this is not what we think of as pleasure. This is not us just getting our itches scratched.

This is the Lord's honored pleasure where He gives you things that are blessed by Him, things that are approved by Him, where He does give you good food and friendship and joy. And maybe you like sports or something. Any of you doing anything with the Olympics? I don't watch any of the sports, but I have a friend who's actually covering the Olympics as a journalist. But I don't watch the Olympics, sorry, especially the cold ones. It's already too cold here. I don't want to be looking at cold things, you know. But those kind of things, if you enjoy things, if you enjoy fishing, if you enjoy cooking, if you enjoy time with your family, games, the things that are not moral things necessarily, but that can be done in a way that where you see the Lord has given you the enjoyment or the pleasure of that thing, and you can honor the Lord with that thing. And even things like singing and worship, that you should have pleasure when you worship the Lord. It should please you. I love this song. This is a song where I can sing and give my heart to the Lord. I hope he's here in my heart. Pleasure is not sinful unless it is sinful pleasure. God invented pleasure. I don't know if you know, but that's why things feel good.

He gave you sensations and the ability to experience things with pleasure, as long as they're not perverted pleasure. So don't think that God wants to take away all the fun. He's not— what's that old killjoy? Is that what people used to say? God wants us to be pleased, but he wants us to be pleased with him and what he gives us. I'll give— I took something away from Piper. I'll give it back because I love his quote that says that the Lord gives us our treasure so that we can show that our treasure is not our treasure, but he is our treasure. So all the good things that God gives you are for you to turn back to him and praise. Even this morning we heard that our good things he gives us are to share with others. Like, God gave us this life so that we can have joy and that we can have pleasure that he would smile at, not ever putting him on the side, not ever saying, I'm going to go do this pleasurable thing and ignore God. That's not okay. But to enjoy him. What is the chief end of man according to the catechism? To glorify God. And what's the last part? Enjoy him forever. Enjoy him forever.

Let's pray. Thank you, Father, for David's example here. Thank you for the lessons. And it's very simple what we can take from this, but Father, these are the kind of things that we might brush past too quickly and miss. But we do want that spiritual life, the life of you being enough for us, the life of us measuring the things you give us and being content with what you give us, the life of turning all good things you give us back to blessing to you, to bless your name, to praise you. So help us do that. Help us be people that do that. So that you get glory and we are regularly in your presence, just like David is here where the pleasures and joy is. And we'll thank you in Jesus' name. Amen.