Psalm 16: Delight In God

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.

Psalm 16

v. 1: Be advised: Everyone takes refuge in something. 

When what you love is threatened, when your treasures, whatever they are, are in danger of assault, the true gravitational pull of what you trust will be apparent. No one has to tell a two-year-old who just had his finger smashed in his bedroom door to run to his mom. We are finite creatures, that is how we are made, and when we are threatened by the reality of our own frailty in a fallen world, by the truth that we don’t know what the next moment holds or why this thing hurts so bad or why we can’t make the child behave or when the phone call will come, confronted by the fact that we can’t control what the diagnosis will be or when we’ll finally find the job we need, when the fact that we are limited created beings is apparent, we cling to something, we rely on something, we take refuge in something. 

And so here is David, singing as one in pain or in the throes of fear, and the words he forms and that the Holy Spirit inspires and records for us are “Preserve me O God, for in You I take refuge…”

Here’s David, whose life was scored by assaults (King Saul, his son Absalom, enemies in Philistia and Edom and Moab), here’s David in a world where he was more likely to die of murder than of old age, during a lifetime of near constant threat from human hands, and his instincts were to flee to His God for refuge. He trusted Yahweh with his life, his wellbeing, his eternity. 

v. 5: When Yahweh Himself, the God of this Bible, the God who is Father and Son and Spirit, when He is your portion, your chosen treasure, the delight of your heart, your joy is hard as diamond. 

This world can take your job, your health, your reputation, your family, your money, but there you will still be, with a thorough, deep, abiding joy, joy that might as well be locked in a box a million miles above their heads for all the good their threats and recessions and diseases can do to it. David’s portion was untouchable to the hands of earth, because his portion was the God who had sovereignly chosen him, the God who would never reject him, the God who Himself ordained every last thing that happened on the earth with an unfailingly wise heart. Your joy is only as sustainable as its object is strong. David’s joy, his gladness, his cheer of heart was as enduring as it was because its source was a God whose posture towards David would never ultimately change, a God whose beauty could be examined for an eternity and its surface barely scratched, a God whose heart and ways are as steadfast as Everest. 

v. 2: David would exhort those who truly know God to acknowledge that we bring no good thing to Him, but He bestows all the good we have on us. 

No blessing in your life bypassed His hand. You’re sitting here this morning with lungs that work in a room at a livable temperature with a heart pumping blood throughout your body and air to carry the sound from my voice to your ears. You and I tasted food yesterday (by the way, there was no law that God had to create taste) and we will drive home today, Lord willing, on roads carved into topsoil He created for us on which to move and exist and have our being. This is how the Holy Spirit through David would have us see the world when our eyes lift up from the pages of the Psalms, see that we live in a world under stars He sparked and a moon He fashioned so that we should be able to mark the seasons, amidst grass and tulips and blue jays and bear cubs and bottlenose dolphins that He authored, orbiting a star that sheds mountains of fire while it also makes our corn grow, and that He made it all in the amount of time it takes me to get a pack of 9-volt batteries delivered from Amazon. 

David would have us look at our plate of spaghetti tonight and say, “I have no good apart from You.” My tongue is Your invention, the grains in the noodles grew from Your sun and Your rain, the life and the thought that made it possible for these things to be on this table in this moment were Your doing, Your breathing, Abba. No one inhales apart from Your decree, no sparrow dies apart from Your decree, and no food gets to me apart from Your decree. 

This is a world of what C.S. Lewis called “deep magic” because this is the world of a deep and profoundly beautiful God. It is groaning under the weight of what sin has wrought, and that is why cancer and Covid and tsunamis exist, but the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the Lord of all the earth, He is no less the Writer of this world than He was on day one. And there is no click of a pen in a doctor’s hand as he prepares to write his diagnosis, there is no word in a text message from the mean-spirited sister who loves to hurt you, there is no termination notice from your company written in that cold, sterile language that makes your eyes swim, there is not one millisecond of time nor one movement of an electron that He is not working together for the good of those who love Him and are called according to His purposes. 

This is His world, His story, and so we can say, “We bring no good to You, but You bring all good to us.” 

v. 3: Delight in the God of Jesus Christ is inseparably woven with delight in His people. They are as organically connected as head and body, branch and root. 

This is a God who adopts, who crafts a people, who is building a kingdom of citizens of His own making. If we delight in Him, we will delight in His people.

v. 4: To run after other “gods” is to multiply your wounds, your sorrows, your stumblings. 

Because we hasten after something when we are threatened, David can make this inspired comment. People always run after their gods, and every heart, every family, every nation has them. Humans are worshipers. We chase meaning, hope, ultimate fulfillment, and whether we call the thing on the other side of that chase our god or not is irrelevant; that’s exactly what it is. It’s our god. And the reality is that there is only one true God, one being worthy of worship, only one wise and glorious God who can actually bear the weight of our souls. 

And so when a man is in pain and flees to pornography, stakes his hopes in his retirement savings, fortifies himself in a projected strength in the hopes that his cardboard castle walls will keep the enemies at arms’ length, he is layering his sorrows up higher and higher. Instead of having merely the first-order suffering, he will now have the added pain that inevitably comes when the created thing he’s trusted in can’t hold the weight he’s placed on it. No sexual thrill, no 401k, no fleeting admiration from some peer can ever be the truest salve for our truest wounds. Every created thing will eventually reveal itself to be a created thing. The binged TV show eventually ends, the holiday merges into the workday, the husband or wife lets us down, and if we had taken our refuge in any of them we now know two sorrows; we still have the pain of the fallen world to suffer, and we are now keenly aware that this thing wasn’t able to satisfy us. 

Every banquet the world’s gods offer a man will end up tasting like ash in his mouth on the last day if they are his heart’s truest treasure. You can marry the prom queen, have a family like the one in the picture that comes with the frame, retire early with two homes and a boat or two boats and a home or no boats, two homes and a rocket ship, you could have all the prestige at work that any craving heart could realistically hope for, every last pair of eyes watching you enter the break room in stunned silence because you are the paragon of success and competence. “Look,” they’d say, “there’s Jerry. I’d give anything to be him.” All of it will look like rusty scrap metal on the day we stand before our Creator and give an account of our days and our words and our breaths. Gifts aren’t gifts when you’re addicted to them, and no blessing seems like a blessing when you put it in an improper place, the throne of your heart. The sorrows of those who run after other gods will always multiply. 

But in the same way, let me say that if this God of this Jesus Christ is your heart’s truest prize, if He is who and what you chase, then all of this life’s goods could be taken from you, all of this world’s ailments could afflict you and your sorrows will not be multiplied. Because He is a treasure that cannot be taken from you. God Himself is an inheritance that cannot be stolen by thieves or eaten by moths, is not subject to dips in the Nasdaq or able to be slain by Covid or cancers. 

v. 5-6: Christian, Yahweh holds the lot, the die of your future. He is your inheritance and He is the Shaper of your tomorrows. 

We should not spend the same amount of mental and emotional energy, the same number of minutes, manipulating and maneuvering the details of our futures as our unbelieving friends and neighbors do. The Lord holds our lot. 

David and the Spirit of Yahweh who inspired these words would have us, as Yahweh’s adopted children, trust that He is carving out our child’s first day of school, whether or not we get the promotion, whether or not that difficult conversation next week will go the way we hope. He holds the Christian’s lot, His choices determine our days, and He is working all things, from your choice of what color shirt to wear this morning to my mother’s epilepsy, all things for His glory and the good of His people. There is no rightful place for fretting in the Christian heart. 

David can call where his feet have been placed “pleasant” because he trusts the One who’s placed him there. 

v. 7: Train your heart to instruct you in the night now. 

A heart is like a horse: The only safe way to own one is to train it. A heart that is not disciplined in the ways of God, a heart that is not shepherded so as to walk where it should go, it will lead you astray quickly (Numbers 15:37-41). And in times of greater stress and greater turmoil this will happen all the more. How many of you have found yourselves tempted to faithless anxiety, to numb your pain with pornography, to distract yourself with gossip this past year? We must train our hearts in the daylight so that when night comes and our eyes droop we may still walk in the right way. 

Fortify your heart now with truth, and when the world buffets you with wave after wave of turmoil you’ll be that much more able to stay standing. 

v. 8-9: For the man with David’s heart, the man who shares in David’s inheritance, the man who’s been born again and truly knows God, a heart which in love with Yahweh’s counsel, the setting of Yahweh before that heart will be a component of his rejoicing. 

How many of you have felt a stagnancy? A malaise? Like you’re suffering from spiritual dry rot? I know it’s not everyone, but I also know it happens to saints the world over and throughout the centuries. And one of the ways we starve ourselves is by not putting God continually before our eyes. The gatekeepers at the temples of Facebook and Twitter and Netflix and YouTube know my name and my face and look for me every morning, all the while the throne room of the Messiah  waits, the God who is worthy of every shred of my heart, every cell in my body, the God who made me and can satisfy me and gives joy sturdier and more substantial than I have words, my eyes wander from Him because there’s something shiny on TV. Listen to me, there is not one soul in this room for whom He is not able to provide joy that will outlast every other offer this world can make. Set Him before your eyes, keep His Word and His graces at your right hand, and you will not be shaken, your heart will taste gladness that this world would marvel at. 

v. 10: Christian, Jesus Christ’s resurrection is the firstfruits of ours. (Acts 2:23-32)

The reason why my believing grandfather, dead six years now, hasn’t stood for the last time on God-made soil is that Mary Magdalene found a tomb shockingly empty and hugged a Jesus very much risen. This God who made flesh and bone will not let sin’s death have the last word over them. This God has not chosen to let death finally deteriorate what He made on the sixth day, namely what you and I call the imago dei, what the biologists call homo sapiens, and what my one-year-old son calls “ba.” People. Human beings. Us. Mouths, kneecaps, knuckles, breath, and all, we are the capstone of His creation, and that creation will be raised on this history’s last day. 

Jesus Christ was not abandoned to Sheol, Jesus Christ saw no decay, and so our bodies can rest securely knowing that ours is a resurrecting God, and that there will be a resurrection of the saints, God’s people (Acts 2:23-32, 1 Corinthians 15:12-58). We can know that when death is tossed into the Lake of Fire like a soiled rag that a good workman is through with, like a feckless traitor finally turned out by a good and returning King, when death looks over the lip of that Lake of eternal flames prepared for the devil, all his angels, and all their weapons, death will not get the pleasure of looking back and seeing that at least it left behind a family of grieving Christian ghosts. No, instead it will see that the hands that it slayed are stronger, the eyes it closed now see clearer, and that every son or daughter of Abba Father that it put in the grave He has put back on top of His good ground. This is a resurrecting God, and the day is nearer, nearer now than it was yesterday, a year closer than when we first heard of Covid, it is nearer than when I started this sentence, the day is nearer when every true Christian in this room will be standing before the Lamb of God, the Lion of Judah, the risen King Jesus the Christ, standing with bodies unbreakable, standing as men and women that no pandemic, no car accident, no aneurysm, no miscarriage, no auto-immune disease can ever spoil. 

I imagine that outside that Jerusalem tomb where our Jesus did not decay that Satan wondered at how death, death, the harshest of stings, the sharpest of arrows with which he’d hoped to pierce the heart of our God, death, the curse he’d had so much hope for on the day he persuaded our first father and first mother, Adam and Eve, to bring upon creation, how death could be used against him. Death was his weapon, his ugliness flung at the artwork of God, the artwork you and I call the world. Death was the enemy he had smuggled into the gates, the enemy he’d hoped would eat God’s world from the inside. And here, in this Jerusalem grave, was God’s Son, the One through whom that world had been made, bitten by the serpent’s own poison. Dead and abandoned to Sheol and already decaying, because He had taken on what had been cursed: Flesh. 

Or here He was where supposed to be. Here was where Satan had been sure he’d left Him.

But now the Son of God is over there, not in the grave, where dead men should be! He’s over there in the garden, being hugged by a woman crying tears very different from Eve’s, from the last time we were in a garden. Here’s this immoral woman who used to be his, who used to have seven of his demons dwelling in her until this man showed up, here she is weeping with joy at His feet, feet very much not in Sheol, feet very much not decaying, and how exactly has this woman Mary Magdalene been forgiven, ransomed, cleansed? How did it happen? By a death! A death is what purchased her for God! 

And what do we remember when we take Lord’s Supper, what are we proclaiming to the watching world and a Hell that gnashes its teeth in fury, but a victorious, world-purchasing death! Every Good Friday is a mockery of Satan’s weapon, every communion is a joyful song sung against sin’s deepest scar, and Satan can scheme and plot his little heart away until history’s last note, but death’s days are numbered, and every sunrise it has one less in which to work its black magic. 

Because no cross will ever hold our Savior’s body ever again. Something is nailed there, but it is not His form. It is our sins. This is the story our God is telling, one in which He has undone death with death, and one in which Christ’s side may hold Thomas’ hand but it will never again hold a spear. One in which the curse was turned to our blessing. 

Our friend Charles died this past summer, and God willing I will someday shake his hand again, because he will have a hand to shake, and so will I. Death does not get the last word over flesh, our God does, and His last word is one that has no echo because it has no end. 

v. 11: Understand that God wants to do this. God wants to make known the paths of life, present fullness of joy, give eternal pleasures from His own right hand. 

Does your mind have a category for the fact that God’s hand contains pleasures for you that cannot rust, cannot spoil, and that He delights in gifting them to you? If not, please read more Bible and believe more Bible. 

This is no begrudging God we have who gives away life everlasting and an eternal home as He frowns and folds His arms and taps His foot and gives a guilt-inducing sigh. This is the Father in Luke 15 who runs with abandon and wraps His lost son up in His arms and commands that a party be thrown as His angels shout for joy in a way that would make an FC Cincinnati match look like a funeral by contrast.

This God delights in giving away joy the way you and I delight in giving our children the Christmas gift we’d spent it all for, the one we’ve been waiting since August to see them open. This is a God who made beautiful things because He is more beautiful than the sum total all of them, and He offers Himself with cheerful, glad, happy abandon to the reckless and rebellious and obstinate. He takes heroin addicts and gossips and lying scoundrels and greedy wealth-hoarders and sexual sinners, He takes Mary Magdalenes and Simon Peters and Matthews and Pauls, and He washes them and makes them something different. He makes them sons and daughters, every last one He’s chosen from before the foundation of the world, right down to the one who called himself the chief of sinners. And He does it with great joy. Great delight. 

Delight in this delighting God. Root your joy in this joyous God, this God whose right hand will wipe every tear from every last one of His people’s eyes, this God whose Heaven and new city on a new earth will be a beauty incomparable, and who Himself will be the lamp, the sun, the daystar of that city.

Delight in this God.