Psalm 16:1-11

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 … . . .

Psalm 16:11

Look at this example. It is awesome, when you think of this in connection to what we are talking about. Do you realize that through prayer, through Bible study, through Sabbath services, that we are in the presence of God? And that in His presence is joy evermore! Not discouragement. Not despair. Not despondency. Not feelings of guilt, but joy!

Do you understand that He is such a powerful Personality that, when we are in His presence, it is very difficult not to be affected by what He is? This is why we need to pray. I mean, it is an absolute necessity! This is why we need to take advantage of this invitation to fellowship with Him, in study and prayer, because this great Personality wants to infuse us with what He is. And it becomes infused in us because we are around Him.

We have that proclivity to adapt to the environment in which we find ourselves. When we have grown up in this world, our character gets to be set in such a way that it is against God. It is only by being in His presence that this thing can be counteracted. This invitation to fellowship is our salvation. There is not only just "joy" in His presence. There is love. There is peace. There is goodness. There is gentleness. There is kindness. There is mercy. There is self-control and every other attribute of the Spirit of God. That is where it is at. It is in His presence.

Can you see the story that is being worked out from Adam and Eve on? How that through the sins of mankind, man became separated from God, hid from God? But now, through Christ, the ability to get back into His presence, into fellowship—as it were, into the very Garden of Eden—has been opened to us again? It is only in His presence that all of the good attributes of His Spirit are available to us. That is the importance of Passover. It is not just the death of Christ. It is the effect of the death of Christ: communion with God, fellowship with Him.

Psalm 16:11

What he is saying is that because God has showed him the path and he is walking in God's way (and because he is in the presence of God, fellowshipping with God)—it begins to produce fullness of joy. That's a fruit of walking God's way.