Psalm 16: Joyful in the Lord’s Presence ~ 1st Presbyterian Strasburg

Scripture Introduction:
Opening remarks by me---grateful to be back at your fine church

Reading the Psalms with a ‘tri-perspectival’ approach courtesy Tim Keller article in
Redeemer Report
Reading this Psalm - what is it?
one of 10-12 Psalms of confidence of trust-elements of these Psalms (Bullock)

Sermon Introduction:
In his landmark book Desiring God, John Piper makes these vital statements by first
playing off the words of the First question of the Westminster Shorter Catechism:
“The chief end of God is to glorify God and enjoy himself forever…The happiness of
God in God is the foundation of our happiness in God…For God is most glorified in us
when we are most satisfied in him.”
He grounds this well in much of Scripture and commends a “Christian hedonism”
which has impacted many for good in the evangelical church.
“Delight yourself in the Lord” Ps 37:4 …we are commanded to be joyful—
isn’t this astounding? “Rejoice in the Lord always” – Phil. 4
and yet There are many things which can rob us of our joy---sins, struggles, sickness,
being sinned against, a fallen world, mental health issues, fears…According to Mark
McMinn, a Christian counselor,

Fear is like a cancer that invades our faith and robs us of joy. Christian
author Ben Patterson describes various “joy busters” in his book He Has
Made
Me Glad (Patterson, 2005), and each of them pertain to fear. In our fear, we
focus
on past wounds and doubts about the future. Fear keeps us focused on the
complications
of present circumstances, preventing us from seeing the grand and
glorious work of God in the scheme of history. We fear losing control, so we
put severe limits on the ecstasy we experience in God’s love. In all these
ways
and more, fear is a great enemy of the spiritual life. Henri J. M. Nouwen
(1986)—
a well-known author and Catholic priest with graduate training in psychology
—
writes:
“We are fearful people. The more people I come to know and the more I come
to
know people, the more I am overwhelmed by the negative power of fear. It
often
seems that fear has invaded every part of our being to such a degree that we
no
longer know what a life without fear would feel like.”

God speaks to us in this Psalm in the midst of our fears, our discontent, our
struggles…Because the Lord is our portion, we can be joyful in His
presence. Indeed He commands us elsewhere in Scripture: “Rejoice
in the Lord always, again I say rejoice” (Phil. 4). This is not a
superficial happiness or a joy that’s often promised today w/out real struggle and
sorrow- But it’s a deep, abiding joy, nonetheless. However, without help and
motivation from the Lord, we are utterly powerless to sustain such joy. Fortunately, he
does not leave us without help---He gives us guidance by His Spirit from our passage,
Psalm 16, this very morning! So we ask…
How may we experience such a deep and abiding joy? pause (in at least 3 ways):
One’s a negative, something we must stop doing and 2 are positive, things we ought
to continue doing: so, we can access this joy by God’s grace -
By forsaking the idols of the heart, By having eyes to see “the riches of his glorious
inheritance in the saints” and By Practicing his presence continually.

Explanation:
1. By forsaking the idols of the heart
“Little children, keep yourselves from idols.” (1 John 5:21) don’t read yet!
David says to the Lord after asking for safety and coming to him as a refuge in v. 2: “You
are my Lord; apart from you I have no good thing.”

a. knowing God as the Lord v. 2

We see her the importance of our words- “I said to the Lord, “you are my Lord; apart
from you I have no good thing.”

b. understanding the sorrows of the wicked for what they are v. 4

We also see the folly of idolatry. Verse 4 says “the sorrows of those will increase who
run after other gods…” We certainly clearly can see it in a culture that has largely
forsaken God but it is also a problem in the church, in the hearts of individual believers:
(in my heart, in your hearts!) Idolatry as a continuing problem today though it takes on
different, often more subtle forms- Tim Keller says in a study on “Identifying the Idols
of the Heart”:
“An idol is something within creation that is inflated to function as a
substitute for God.
All sorts of things are potential idols… An idol can be a physical object, a
property, a
person, an activity, a role, an institution, a hope, an image, an idea, a
pleasure, a hero. If
this is so, how do we determine when something is an idol?
1) As soon as our loyalty to anything leads us to disobey God, we are in
danger of
making it an idol…
– Work, a commandment of God can become an idol if it is pursued so
exclusively
that responsibilities to one’s family are ignored.
– Family, an institution of God himself, can become an idol if one is so
preoccupied
with the family that no one outside one’s own family is cared for.
– Being well-liked, a perfect legitimate hope, becomes an idol if the
attachment to it
means one never risks disapproval. (read from “idols” sheet if there is
time!)
(Read Ps 73:16-20 if time especially)---the end of those who do not worship
God.
Tim Keller has a new book called Counterfeit Gods which I began reading (my
wife finished). There he deals with the modern idols of love (or sex), money
and power.

Calvin says the human heart is an “idol-making factory”.

Brief Application: What are your idols? We might call them addictions or even dress
them up and call them good things or just obsessions and compulsions---but Scripture
teaches us the continual problem of idolatry in the present day of not only doing works of
the flesh but trying to do even good things to excess or as a way of commending
ourselves before God and others!
So, then how can we healed of such idolatry which often robs us of true joy in the Lord?
First, we recognize as David says that God is the Lord and apart from him we can have
no good thing…with Him, we receive what we need; in fact, the apostle Paul will say that
“all things are yours” in Christ Jesus. Second, we need to recognize, name and repent of
these idols by forsaking them. It’s no wonder that the elder John ends his first epistle
which deals with “living fellowship with Jesus” with the words: “Little children, keep
yourselves from idols.”
Illustration: One great historical example of someone who forsook their idols to follow
the Lord is John Bunyan. Several of you, I’m sure, have read his Pilgrim’s Progress, one
of the best selling books of all time after the Bible! In his autobiography, he describes his
conversion to Christ in this manner: Every little touch would hurt my tender
conscience. But one day, as I was passing
through a field, suddenly I thought of a sentence, “your righteousness is in
heaven,”
and with the eyes of faith, I saw Christ sitting at God’s right hand. And I
suddenly
realized — THERE is my righteousness. Wherever I was or whatever I was
doing, God
could not say, “where is your righteousness?” for it was right before him. I
saw that my
good frame of heart could not make my righteousness better nor a bad frame
of heart
make my righteousness worse, for my righteousness was Jesus Christ, the
same
yesterday, today and forever.
Now my chains fell off indeed! I felt delivered from slavery to guilt and fears. I
went
home rejoicing for the love and grace of God. Now I could look from myself to
him, and
I realized that all those weak character qualities in my heart were like the
pennies that
rich men carry in their pocket, when their gold is safe under lock and key.
Christ is my
treasure, my righteousness. Now Christ was my wisdom, righteousness,
holiness, and
salvation.”

Now, we come to the 2nd way in which we can experience joy in the Lord

2. By having eyes to see “the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints”
(Eph 1:18) as St. Paul says in Ephesians 1:18. For David, the Psalmist, this
inheritance has at least two features:

a. First, it involves experiencing delight in “the saints”- fellow believers, companions

on the way v. 3---this verse which is difficult to translate from the Hebrew seems to
primarily mean what the NIV would say-
“As for the saints who are in the land, they are the glorious ones in whom is all my
delight.” This, of course, is a contrast with verse 4 which deals with the idol-worshippers
—those whose lives are consumed with their own plans rather than God’s agenda.
(Discuss the importance of spiritual friendships---Men’s groups, Men’s night’s out, home
groups, family devotional time, etc.
Brief Illustration: I saw a good picture of this from the animal world this a few years ago
around Thanksgiving when my family and I had the joy of visiting the National
Aquarium in Baltimore with my parents and sister and her children. (The Dolphin
show---Maya and Spirit- beauty and delight of the dolphins working together in concert
to do astounding tricks---including touching a buoy with its nostrum high up in the air---
but this came through hard training, the trainers knowing the dolphins’ very well)….
We have a heavenly trainer who loves us well, disciplines us for our good and longs to
bring us joy by the fellowship of the saints, by experiencing in greater degrees Christian
community with one another at 1st Presbyterian Church and with fellow believers in our
family, workplace, etc.

b. Second, it means taking refuge in our Lord as our chosen portion- the reality of
the “beautiful (ESV) or delightful (NIV) inheritance” vv. 5-6
Verse 5 in the ESV translates well: “The LORD is my chosen portion and my cup; you
hold my lot.”—refers to the Levites who were God’s priests under the old covenant.
Under the new covenant, we are all “a kingdom of priests to serve God our Father” as
Revelation 1 (our benediction) puts it.
Verse 6 in concert with Ephesians 1 and many other passages show us what a beautiful
inheritance we have in the Lord God. Augustine’s Confessions is one of the most
powerful books I’ve ever read! When I last read it, it strongly emphasized the importance
of forsaking idols, of Christian fellowship as we live in the reality of our beautiful
inheritance with the Lord as our chosen portion:
Jerry Sittser comments on the Confessions: (condense in my reading for time’s sake)
What makes it so timeless and compelling?
Its genius comes, I think, from Augustine’s ability to reflect so
brilliantly on his own conversion experience, which he wrote in the
form
of a prayer, as if he were having an intimate conversation with God
about
his soul’s journey to God.
Casting off the faith of his mother when he was only a teenager,
Augustine
(A.D. 354-430) sampled various philosophies and lifestyles before
realizing
that only God could answer the deepest questions of his mind and
satisfy the deepest desires of his heart. He indulged himself in
physical
pleasure, but it failed to deliver what it promised. No matter how
much he
enjoyed the lusts of the flesh, he always ended up wanting more. He
strove
for success, fame and recognition, but these too led to bitter
disappointment.
He discovered over time that he had become a prisoner to his base
desires and ambitions, which threatened to destroy his life. What he
truly
desired, of course, was to know God. “I was hankering after honors,
wealth
and marriage,” he prayed to God, “but you were laughing at me.
Very bitter
were the frustrations I endured in chasing my desires, but all the greater
was your kindness in being less and less prepared to let anything other than
yourself grow sweet to me.”1 Not that pleasure and beauty and ambition
are evil in themselves. They become evil only when pursued apart from
God. God must always be first in our lives because God is the center,
source and end of all existence. “Sin gains entrance through these and
similar
good things when we turn to them with immoderate desire, since they
are the lowest kind of goods and we thereby turn away from the better and
higher: from you yourself, O Lord
our God, and your truth and your
law.”2 Augustine eventually surrendered
his life to God, but only after
a long and tumultuous struggle.
(Read if there is time): Augustine would say in book 10 of his
Confessions
Late have I loved you, Beauty so ancient and so new,
late have I loved you!
Lo, you were within,
but I outside, seeking there for you,
and upon the shapely things you have made I rushed headlong,
I, misshapen.
You were with me, but I was not with you.
They held me back far from you,
those things which would have no being
were they not in you.
You called, shouted, broke through my deafness;
you flared, blazed, banished my blindness;
you lavished your fragrance, I gasped, and now I pant for you;
I tasted you, and I hunger and thirst;
you touched me, and I burned for your peace

Finally, we learn from Psalm 16, that we can experience true joy…
3. By Practicing his presence continually
“I have set the LORD always before me. Because he is at my right hand, I will not
be shaken” (v. 8)---This involves 3 aspects-

a. intentional disciplines of grace vv. 7-9

“Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances…” (1 Thess
5:16-18a) is a good gloss on this passage as well as the entire Psalter really.
ideas –fixed hour prayer (7x a day I will praise you, early Christians, monastics,
Benedict’s rule, BCP, many returning to this practice today---we may need more
than a mere “quiet time” to sustain us in the Christian life, other disciplines—
fasting, solitude, study, service, celebration (in worship), meditation, etc.
(I have copies of a helpful handout called “Riches of Grace” in the Narthex which
contains 34 things to ponder about the Lord’s gracious riches for those in Christ!—
read several of the statements—5 or 6)

Illustration: Brother Lawrence handout? Briefly illustrate his life (Sittser or Foster
or Holt?)

As we conclude this morning, there are 2 other aspects of what it means to practice
Christ’s presence in this great Psalm:

b. first, by trusting in Jesus our King whose “soul was not abandoned to the grave”
(vv. 8-11 cited in Acts 2:25-28) Jesus sings this Psalm of confidence for us— (read
Futato 177-78)

c. and second, knowing that what is true of Jesus the Christ is true of the believer:
namely, in the Lord’s presence “there is fullness of joy” (v. 11-ESV)
J. Clinton McCann Jr. summarizes Psalm 16 well: Those who entrust their lives to
God experience a depth of stability and joy and security that not even death can
undermine…Abundant life will not be something we achieve but something we receive.
We begin to experience this gift when we say with the psalmist, “You are my Lord”. This
act of humility promises exaltation. Psalm 16 is both a challenge to keep the Lord always
before us and a promise that the experience of God’s presence is its own reward:
abundant life and fullness of joy.

Conclusion:
( if time or apt- OT scholar, John Goldingay, helpfully summarizes the meaning of this
rich Psalm we’ve been considering this morning: “Psalm 16 knows that Yhwh is the God
of this life and not just of the future life nor just of religious life, and provides for this life
in abundance. It is one of the reasons why people should stay faithful to Yhwh.”)
Several writers from the past have put it well concerning making Christ the focus of
one’s life: John Brentnall says- Let us then seek grace to relegate everything and
everyone to their proper place beneath Christ, and to make Him all. Here are a few
of the quotes he cites-
“Have ye renounced all other things for your all, and have ye received Him to be
your all?” (Philip Henry)

“I wish it were in my power . . . to cry down all love but the love of Christ, and to cry
down all gods but Christ, all saviours but Christ, all well-beloveds but Christ, and all
soul-suitors and love-beggars but Christ.” (Samuel Rutherford)

Ben Patterson, in his book He Has Made Me Glad references a great story that
Charles Spurgeon told:

In his little book Eccentric Preachers, he tells of the

nineteenth-century preacher Billy Bray of Cornwall, England. Billy came
to Christ as an alcoholic miner at age twenty-nine and was immediately
filled with a grateful joy that makes my Uncle Albert seem restrained. He
said, “In an instant the Lord made me so happy I cannot express what I
felt. I shouted for joy. Everything looked new to me; the people, the
fields, the cattle, the trees. I was like a new man in a new world.” He became
a Methodist and started to preach with such enthusiasm that people
called him a madman. Billy laughed it off and said, “They mean ‘glad
man’!” Thus a fruitful forty-four-year career of evangelism, church planting
and caring for orphans was launched in joy.
Billy’s joy affected his walking. He said, “I can’t help praising God. As
I go along the street I lift one foot up and it seems to say ‘Glory!’ and I
lift the other, and it seems to say, ‘Amen!’ And they keep on like that all
the time I’m walking.” Billy fasted each week every Sunday afternoon
until Sunday evening. If he was urged to eat something, he would exclaim,
“On Sunday I get my breakfast and dinner from the King’s table, two good
meals too.”
Even death was powerless to rob him of his delight in God. When he
lost his beloved wife, Joey, he jumped around the room shouting, “Bless
the Lord! My dear Joey is gone up with the bright ones! Glory! Glory!
Glory!” It was the same when he found out that he too was dying. He
shouted, “Glory! Glory to God! I shall soon be in heaven.” Then he told
the doctor, “When I get up there, shall I give them your compliments doctor,
and tell them you will be coming, too?” His last word was, “Glory!”
Spurgeon concludes, “It does not seem so very horrible after all, that a man
should be eccentric.”

Patterson goes on to say:

The Nazirites were people of Israel who separated themselves from others
in a vow of consecration to the Lord. For the duration of their vow
they did not cut their hair and abstained from alcoholic beverages. Their
lifestyle wasn’t for everybody, but their devotion was. Their eccentric
presence was a reminder of commitment to the Lord that applied to all
the people.
I think God sometimes sends Nazirities of joy to his church, not so
much that we should copy their behavior as come to desire their joy in
God. The way Billy Bray expressed joy belonged to him alone. But the
joy he found in God is for everybody. There are not different brands of joy,
just as there are not different brands of God.
As David says in Psalm 16:11: You have made known to me the path of life;
you will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right
hand.

Let me close by reading/praying Psalm 16 in Eugene Peterson’s The Message-