Psalm 16

⁰⁹          Therefore my heart is glad,

and my very soul rejoices;

my body also rests in hope.

¹⁰                For you will not abandon my soul to Sheol,

or let Your Holy One see corruption.

¹¹        You have made known to me the path of life eternal;

in Your presence there is fullness of joy;

at Your right hand are pleasures forever more.

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My Heart is Glad

For the Lord’s Day:  the 1^st of February 2004

Introduction:  There is a cute advertisement on television wherein a young man is duped into improving his image so as to inherit the family fortune.  Having made a dramatic wardrobe and personal appearance changeover, his supposedly deceased grandmother excuses the inheritance charade as necessary to get him to think about his former tawdry appearance before the family and friends.  Cute, but hardly effective, for as many times that I have seen the ad, I couldn’t tell you what product was being promoted.

 

Last week, in our study of this precious psalm, we looked over the great inheritance of grace being given freely by the hand of the Almighty Creator of heaven and earth.  Today we trace the emotional response of David the king and sense a special revelation about the greater Son of David to come. To appreciate the awesome beauty of this blessed inheritance, we are invited by David to know the overwhelming joy that springs up in his heart:”Therefore my heart is glad.”

 

Oh how much we must treasure the beatitude of that gracious declaration!  I am reminded of an officer’s wife, (the family was Catholic) – and while the family was stationed at Fort Knox, they attended the Chapel where her husband’s troops might come to church and she, out of the kindness and graciousness of her heart adopted all of us who worked in Cavalry Chapel – Protestant and Catholic alike.  While I am certain that the kind and jovial Father Paul benefited most from the indulgences of baked goods – the rest of us were not forgotten.  The most striking thing about this wonderful lady was her joyful heart for the great gift of salvation she had received in and through Christ.  You may be sure, that our Southern Baptist Chaplain had quizzed her and was convinced of the reality of her inheritance.

 

One Richard Greenham notes:  “Men may for a time be hearers of the gospel, men may for order’s sake pray, sing, receive the sacraments; but if it be without joy, will not that hypocrisy in time break out?  Will they not begin to be weary?”  Calvin too catches the import of David’s confession:  “In this verse the Psalmist commends the inestimable fruit of faith, of which Scripture every where makes mention, in that, by placing us under the protection of God, it makes us not only to live in the enjoyment of mental tranquility, but, what is more, to live [joyfully and cheerfully].”

 

David continues this wondrous recital:  “and my very soul rejoices; my body also rests in hope.”  Now, we will not dwell upon the theories of a bipartite or tripartite division of the human personality – be that as it may:  David is simply stating that the joy divine indwells and affects every part of his persona.  Researchers have long known that sincere believers wax older than the usual norm in their happy condition.  By glaring contrast the “gayest” element of the population has a life span thirty or more years shorter than ordinary.  Were it not for the fact that those Sodomites represent only 1.5 % of the population – the insurance industry would be forced to reappraise their actuary tables.  Even though it costs them a bundle – in the name of political correctness they swallow the ongoing loss.  However, in the first part of this unequal equation, simple believing Christians are a much better and wholesome insurance risk.  True believers, as the industry well knows, are far less likely to live on the extreme edges of life and are therefore less likely to collect on their policies until all the profits have been acquired.

 

Development:  But I delay the greater joys anticipated, there is in this sweet psalm the blessed hope as the Puritans termed it: a blessed hope of life beyond the grave.  “For you will not abandon my soul to Sheol, or let Your Holy One see corruption.” 

 

Now let us realize the reality of the images here.  Some years back I was asked to preach a summer series on heaven and hell.  I chose to entitle that series: “Images of Eternity,” simply because only the Lord God and Creator of all things understands these things perfectly.  Calvin too, would carefully instruct us:  “The etymology or derivation of the two words here used to express the grave should be carefully attended to.  The grave is called “sheol,” being as it were an insatiable gulf, which devours and consumes all things, and the pit is called “shachath,” which signifies “corruption.”  These words, therefore, here denote not so much the place as the quality and condition of the place, as if it had been said, the life of Christ will be exempted from the dominion of the grave, inasmuch as his body, even when dead, will not be subject to corruption.”

 

This hope is not common to the whole of society, but is and should always be the hallmark of Christ’s own church.  I have not lived among the pagans too closely – and have attended few funerals or wakes where our underlying hope in Christ is unknown.   But, I have heard by report that there are dismal times spent in the sudden loss of a loved one – one lost with no hope in the hereafter because there was no realization of any second birth in any way shape or form.

 

Yes, there are a few stoics who earnestly hope that death is the end of everything, but the vast majority realizes the great gapping hole in their soul when confronted by an untimely death.  Whenever, we lost students to accidents in the public sector, all kinds of counselors would crawl out of the woodwork to encourage the public to remember the deceased well – so as to give meaning to their lives.  When I first head of this counseling charade – I refused to participate unless I could share the Christian hope in the cross and blood of Christ crucified and raised from the dead.  Needless to say – my understanding and counsel of hope was carefully and sullenly refused.

 

But, there is a lot more going on in the text than personal assurance that God is ours and we are his, which is the theme treasured in these words of David.  The Apostle Paul tells us in Acts 2: 29-31:  “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.  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.”

 

Here Paul would encourage us to lift our sights from the common labors and troubles of this world to glory in the fact of the risen Christ who died for our own sins.  And of this Messiah, Paul is convinced that David’s own confidence comes from the prophetic words given to him by and through the Spirit.  Because the heir of David’s throne lives, so will he, and all who believe and hope in Him.

 

Application:  In this knowledge, David glories, and it is this knowledge that gives him the blessed hope of eternal life.  Well, is this entire Psalm titled “The Golden Psalm” because of the great hope revealed in the coming Messiah and the ongoing presence that God’s people may have with and in Him alone.  David writes:  “You have made known to me the path of life eternal; in Your presence there is fullness of joy; at Your right hand are pleasures forever more.” 

 

Here we see as Calvin understands it, an explanation of the way in which God will “exempt [David] from the bondage of death” and then bring him “at length safely to the possession of eternal life.”  David would assure us that the Lord God has made him a believer so that he can hope and trust in the eternity of heaven, and that heaven is precisely defined as being in the presence of the Lord God forever and ever.

 

Do we have a present joy in the Lord, then we must admit that it is a gracious gift given to us by the Almighty.  Further, we must learn that this joy is not limited by our earthly timeframe, but in the continued presence of the risen Lord, He will hold our hand throughout eternity.

 

I have not forgotten our German commentator Delitzsch, he brings to us a blessed note that “there is no passage of scripture that so closely resembles this as” 1 Thessalonians 5: 23:  “Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.”  Amen.

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PREACHING RESOURCES

Calvin, John:  Commentary on Book of Psalms.

Delitzsch, F:  Commentary on the Old Testament – Psalms.

Spurgeon, C.H:  Treasury of David.

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