Sermon Tone Analysis

Announcements

This Saturday at 10:30am, we need some help with door-to-door canvassing of the Chester Hill area.

If you’re willing and able to help with this, please talk to Natalie for more details.

On Sunday, February 13th, at 6:30pm, we’re going to open up the church building for a Superbowl Viewing Party.

It’s really just a time of fellowship with the big game on in the auditorium.

We’ll have free wings, pizza, and drinks for anyone who wants to join us.

Let me remind you to continue worshiping the Lord through your giving.

To help you with your giving, we have three ways for you to do so: (1) in-person giving can be done through the offering box in the front of the room; credit, debit, and ACH transfers can be done either by texting the number 84321 with your [$ amount] or by visiting us online at www.gapb.church

and selecting giving in the menu-bar.

Everything you give goes to the building up of our local church and the spread of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Prayer for Repentance and Adoration

Sermon

Introduction

If you have your Bible with you, please turn it to Psalm 16.

While you’re turning there, let me give you some background information as we jump into our series on the book of psalms.

As you know, we’ve been working through the psalms one-by-one, verse-by-verse, and line-by-line.

We’ve been doing this intentionally so that we not only gain a deeper understanding of the psalm itself, but so that we can apply it properly to our lives today.

Many of our psalms so far have been written by David and this evening’s psalm is no different, Psalm 16 is written by David, but just like many of the previous psalms that we’ve studied from him, we have no clue when exactly he wrote it or the situations that surrounded the writing of the psalm.

But what is clear in the text itself, is that David is celebrating his relationship with the LORD in such a way that regardless of what’s happening, he knows that God is trustworthy despite whatever he might be facing.

Let’s read Psalm 16 together:

As we study this psalm together, we’re going to break it into two parts: (1) Vss.

1-8, God is his Portion, starts this passage with David with David describing the relationship that he has with God and sort of reviewing how he had come to know and trust in God.

(2) Vss.

9-11, God will Preserve Him then focuses the end of the psalm with David expressing assurance of God’s protection, which causes him to praise the Lord.

Again, this is a psalm in which we aren’t sure on when David wrote it, but because it isn’t specific to one time period, it’s very easy for us to be able to relate to it and apply it to our lives today.

Hopefully, regardless of what we’re going through today, we can say what David says in Psalm 16 and be assured of our God’s protection of us as his people.

Prayer for Illumination

God is his Portion (1-8)

Psalm 16 starts with two sentences that can really be seen as a purpose statement for all of Psalm 16.

Psalm 16:1-2 “1 Preserve me, O God, for in you I take refuge. 2 I say to the Lord, “You are my Lord; I have no good apart from you.””

David starts this psalm by asking God to preserve him, which gives us a bit of a hint at what might be happening around him.

Fairly often in David’s life, he faced tremendous opposition and in many of those times in which he faced opposition, the threat of the loss of his life was imminent—people were trying to kill him.

Think of when he opposed Goliath as a child, or when Saul tried to take his life, or when Absalom tried to take his life.

Asking God to preserve him indicates that this psalm might have one of those scenarios in mind—David is crying out to God in the face of opposition and he’s asking God to preserve him.

We don’t usually use the term preserve in this sort of context today, but let me just briefly give you an idea of what that means—to preserve in the context of Psalm 16 means to protect, to guard, to keep one safe.

David is asking God to keep him safe, why?

Because David seeks refuge in God.

Now, we’ve spoken numerous times now about what it means to take refuge in something or someone—a few weeks ago, I mentioned that we take refuge from the rain inside buildings; when storms become more dangerous, we take refuge in stronger buildings.

David is making the claim that he takes refuge in God himself—his safety is in God, which again, points to him facing some sort of grave scenario in his life that causes him to think of God as a refuge.

David says, “preserve me,” “keep me safe,” or “protect me” and he’s asking God himself to do this preserving or protecting.

And there’s something of note here, that God is his only source of protection or preservation—David doesn’t rely on anything other than God’s ability to protect him.

He doesn’t rely on friends or family, he doesn’t rely on the government or his own staff; he relies fully on God to preserve him as his refuge.

He doesn’t even rely on himself for refuge, in fact, he says something in vs. 2 that shows us to what extent David relies on God rather than himself or anyone else.

Vs. 2, “I say to the LORD, ‘You are my Lord; I have no good apart from you.’”

There’s something unique happening in the first two phrases of vs. 2, when David says, “I say to the LORD, ‘You are my Lord.’”

It might just sound repetitive, but he’s actually doing something in the words that he’s using—remember that anytime you see the word lord in all capital letters in the Bible, it’s translating a specific word and that word is Yahweh.

In the Hebrew Old Testament, anytime you see the word Lord without all capital letters, it’s translated the word adonai.

David makes this statement, “I say to Yahweh, ‘You are my adonai,” which when translated with that in mind means Yahweh, you are my master or my God.

David says this as a statement of submission to Yahweh.

David makes it abundantly clear who he is and who God is; and by submitting to Yahweh as his master, he makes it clear who he thinks he is in view of Yahweh.

Taken together with vs. 1, it’s clear then that he’s asking God for protection and he’s seeking refuge in God because in his mind and in his life, Yahweh is his master.

Who better to turn to than the one who you’ve placed yourself in submission to?

But not only that, David says that apart from God, he has no good.

And while this is true in a moralistic sense, that isn’t the way that David is referring to goodness in vs 2.

It is true to say that there is no moralistic good in us apart from God—Psalm 14 makes that clear, “there is none righteous, no not one.”

But the goodness that David is referring to in Psalm 16:2, isn’t moralistic good, but good things or pleasant things.

Apart from God, what seems like good things aren’t really good things.

And that’s the point that David is using to drive the rest of the text.

Apart from God, there is no goodness.

Now, I said that vss.

1-2 are almost like a purpose statement for the remaining psalm, so let me explain that.

Everything else that David says in this psalm sort of builds from this point.

And if you just take a quick look through the remaining text, you can see what I’m talking about.

He asks God to protect him, he makes it abundantly clear that Yahweh is his master, and he makes the statement that apart from Yahweh, he isn’t just not good, but he has no good apart from God.

He contrasts the good that God is and the good that God offers to that of the sorrows faced by those who follow other God.

And then he spends quite a bit of time showing how his following of God has given him all the good that he has experienced, a beautiful inheritance, pleasant places, counsel from God, stability in life, and perseverance.

David is taking the idea of there being no good thing apart from God and he’s expounding on it through the remaining text.

He starts by looking at people themselves and he differentiates between two different types of people in vss.

3-4, Psalm 16:3-4 “3 As for the saints in the land, they are the excellent ones, in whom is all my delight.

4 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.”

According to David, there are two different types of people, the saints who he calls excellent and his delight, and those who run after other gods (what we would call pagans or unbelievers).

The word translated as saints can also be translated as holy ones, which I think gives a clearer picture in what David is saying—he’s making the argument that these are people who are described as godly.

They’re genuine believers in Yahweh that are seeking to live according to God’s law.

David calls them excellent and he says that he delights in them—the idea meaning that he enjoys being in their company.

This is whom David spends his time; David is drawn to them.

The pagan unbelievers (David says) will have sorrows that multiply; they will face difficulties in life.

David’s statement “their drink offerings of blood I will not pour out or take their names on my lips” refer to both their false worship and David’s unwillingness to even name their false gods.

Vss.

3-4 essentially show us David’s loyalty and wherein that loyalty lies—David has rejected false worship and has rejected false gods to the extent that he doesn’t enjoy being in the company of those that have accepted false worship of false gods.

He’d rather spend his days with those who believe than those who don’t.

Which honestly, ought to be convicting for us today—how many of us are so loyal to our worship of Yahweh that we’re willing to give up friends and even family?

How many of us are so loyal to God that all else is just as David says in vs. 2, that all else simply isn’t good apart from God?

And I want to be clear that David isn’t saying that there aren’t good things to enjoy in life, but rather he’s saying, that to enjoy these good things and not have God, would be pointless—that what makes them good is God himself.

In fact, David continues in vss.

5-8 by celebrating and praising God for all that God had given him and all that God had done for him.

Psalm 16:5-6 “5 The Lord is my chosen portion and my cup; you hold my lot.

6 The lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; indeed, I have a beautiful inheritance.”

David is directly addressing God and he points first and foremost to Yahweh being his chosen portion and cup.

This is an Ancient Near East concept of an inheritance.

Or in other words, David is seeing God as part of his own personal heritage, that he received God as part of his own inheritance, which sounds peculiar, but let’s clarify it.

David is not saying that his belief in God and receipt of God was due to his parents believing or obeying God.

In a sense, David is saying that he grew up being taught of God, which resulted in his genuine believe in God—and since David genuinely believes in God, he considers his belief in God as part of his inheritance.

In fact, as David continues into vs. 5, it’s clear that the way that he thinks of God and all that God had given him was that all these things were given to him by God as blessings.

“The lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; indeed, I have a beautiful inheritance.”

David praises God for all the blessings that God had given him—the Lord had given him a wonderfully full life.

This song of praise from David concerning God’s blessings is a song that we can sing as well—when we consider all that God has blessed us with, it ought to compel us to worship and praise as well.

But even if we weren’t blessed with many things and great materials, we can still praise and worship God for the first part of vs. 5, “The LORD is my chosen portion and my cup.”

As believers, we can rightly say that we have God and we have a developing relationship with God.

Thus, we can sing the same praise that David does and we can say the same statement that David says.

I have God and God has blessed me tremendously.