Now we will go over a few more of these Messianic psalms just to provide a better idea of how they read and what we can gather from them. Let us go to the very next psalm, Psalm 16. This is one that is on my list. As a matter of fact, the next ones that I do are on my list. Now from one angle, we can read this very well. It comes across just fine, as if David himself is speaking. He is obviously the author, but we could say that this is about him and his life. But from another angle we can see very clearly that it could be spoken by Jesus Christ Himself about His life and the way He relates with God and God's people. I will go ahead and read it fully through so we can get the feel of it.
Let us break this down a little bit. We can obviously see Jesus Christ in the last four verses; that is very easy to see. Most people do not see Him quite as much as the first seven verses, but I want to dispel that because He is all through this.
In verses 1 and 2 the psalm begins with a plea to God to watch over Him, to preserve Him. And then it very quickly turns to a confession of faith and not only faith but dependence. "Preserve me, O God, for in You I put my trust. O my soul, You have said to the Lord, 'You are my Lord. My goodness is nothing apart from You.'" If you remember in the Gospels, Jesus always gave the Father credit for everything that He did. And this shows how His relationship with the Father dominated His life. He would say things like "My Father does the work." He would say things like, "My Father is working and I am working," because that was His standard. And He always looked to the Father for His example and also for His instruction.
Let us go on back in Psalm 16. Verse 3 says, "And to the saints who are on the earth, 'They are the excellent ones, in whom is all my delight.'" I always had a hard time putting this in David's mouth. You know, David might have liked the people around him, but how many of them were actually saints? I do not know. How many people did God call other than David during that time? This actually makes a whole lot more sense if you put it into Jesus' mouth because He is all about the saints. He is all about the people whom God has called and given to Him so that He can teach them and bring them into the Kingdom of God because they are going to be His wife. The saints excite Jesus Christ. And they—we—are His delight. He loves us more than we can understand, and He wants to bring us all into His Kingdom, and so He concentrates all His efforts on us. That is all He does. That is why He is up in heaven right now as our High Priest because He is fixated on bringing His elect into the Kingdom. And He does the works now for us just like the Father did the works while He was on the earth.
Let us go on to verse 4. Verse 4 expresses His conviction not to sin. "Their sorrows shall be multiplied who hasten after another god." He is talking about idolatry. "Their drink offerings of blood, I will not offer, nor take up their names on my lips." This is a literary way of saying that He is going to avoid all those worldly ideas and worldly religions and worldly idolatries because He is fixated on God's truth and the proper way of worship and He would not give in to any of those temptations to sin because of what He just said in the third verse. He had a job to do. He was to bring His excellent ones into the Kingdom of God, and He could not sin. He could not afford to sin because He had to be their sinless sacrifice. And so He made sure that He put all temptation and any kind of attraction to sin far away.
Let us go on to verses 5 and 6. "You, O Lord, are the portion of my inheritance and my cup; You maintain my lot. The lines have fallen to me in pleasant places; yes, I have a good inheritance." I will say! King of kings and Lord of lords! But this is His declaration that God and His reward are His only purpose and goal. You could say His lot, His place in life, His purpose in life is to do what God … . . .
