Psalm 16:11: “You Show Me the Path of Life”

INTRODUCTION

Here we are at the door of another year. It isn’t often that we get to come to church on New Year’s Day. But here we are.

None of us knows what this new year holds for us—of sorrows, of joys, of challenges, of surprises. We only know that we are walking with Jesus, our Savior and our Friend.

At the beginning of the 16th Psalm the psalmist cries out:

Protect me, O God, for in you I take refuge.

I say to the Lord, “You are my Lord;

I have no good apart from you.”

And at the end of this same psalm the psalmist expresses his confidence with these words:

You show me the path of life.

In your presence is fullness of joy;

in your right hand are pleasures forevermore.

So today, as we enter the New Year, we will think together about the path of life on which we are all journeying to the Promised Land.

We began our journey when we were born, and each day brings us closer to its end.

According to Matthew 7:13-14, in the Sermon on the Mount, life is a journey with two roads and two destinies. Jesus said, “Enter through the narrow gate, for the gate is wide and the road is easy that leads to destruction, and there are many who take it. For the gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life and there are few who find it.”

I want to talk about that that hard road, the road that one enters through the narrow gate, the road that leads to life. And that is the road the psalmist speaks of when he says to his God: “Show me the path of life.”

I. We are not born on the path of life. We are born on the path of death. But God does not will that we should continue on that path. God invites every one of us to travel the road that leads to life.

That doesn’t mean that you need to have a conversion story. Maybe that time you committed yourself to Christ was so long ago that you can’t remember making a definite decision. Maybe your faith came so gradually that you don’t know at just which point in your life you passed—as Jesus put it—“from death to life.”

With me, I remember a time when I worried whether I was—as they said it in our church—“saved.” Some of our preachers insisted that to be “saved” one must remember the time when one experienced assurance of salvation. That used to trouble me because I couldn’t remember such an experience. But sometime in my middle teens I came to the confidence that I did believe—and that Jesus was my Savior.

So though I don’t have a conversion story, I do remember an important encounter with God that changed my life. During my freshman year in college, during Christmas break in 1948, I attended a student missionary conference, and during that week I suddenly understood what it meant to live for Jesus.

I realized that faith wasn’t just a belief in the gospel, but a life of obedience—a life with God at the center. That is what it means to believe: to give myself to Jesus. A Bible verse that stood out for me was 1 Corinthians 6:19-20: “You are not your own; you were bought with a price, so glorify God in your body.”

B. But it’s not enough to simply to make a decision for God. The psalmist prays: “Show me the path of life.” Walking with God is a learning experience. Walking with Jesus through life means making many decisions—making ever new beginnings.

Every day we commit ourselves to God. We begin each day determined to live to please our Lord. We seek to live up to our calling and show in our behavior the generosity, kindness, humility, and faithfulness that the Bible calls “the fruits of the Spirit.”

That’s what we mean by walking on the path of life. It’s the path that shows we have the life of Christ in us. It is the path that leads to life—eternal life.

The path of life leads to a glorious future in the eternal Kingdom of the Father.

II. Some people think of New Year’s Day as a good time to make resolutions—to do away with old harmful habits and “turn over a new leaf.”

A. But New Year’s resolutions are hard to keep. New Year’s resolutions seldom lead to permanent change.

This New Year’s Day is a good time to talk about some strategies we can use to make changes in our lives that we have been putting off.

In the book of Hebrews the author says, “Lift your drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees, and make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be put out of joint but rather be healed.”

When the writer says, “Make straight paths for your feet,” he is telling us to make rules for ourselves and stick to them. Rules are not bad. We need rules to keep us on the path of life.

B. Psychologists tell us that one reason New Year’s resolutions are so hard to keep is that people make too many of them.

We get carried away with all the things in our lives we need to change and we get too ambitions.

For example, I may make a resolution to pray 10 minutes every day, and read a chapter from my New Testament each day, to take a walk every day, to skip desserts, and to watch less TV. That’s way too many changes to try to make at one time.

So my suggestion is to make just one resolution at a time, keep it simple and not too ambitious.

For example, if you are dissatisfied with your prayer life, you might make a resolution to make a list of things you want to pray about—things to give thanks for and people to pray for. Then pray over that list every day until daily prayer becomes a habit.

Once something becomes a habit, it requires no will power to keep it up. It is easier to continue doing it than not. It’s like brushing your teeth. You don’t decide each day to brush your teeth; you just do it. Just so, prayer should be a habit—something you just do at a set time each day.

III. We have talked about the Path of Life. Now we look at the last part of our verse—the glorious destination that path leads to.

A. If you’ve been coming to these services, you know that I never get tired of talking about Heaven. The psalm ends—

In your presence is fullness of joy;

in your right hand are pleasures forevermore.

Joys on earth are foretastes of heaven.

We all can look back on times of great joy, when our hearts were so full, we thought we could hold no more. Those feelings never lasted—but they were a foretaste of the time when we will be in God’s presence—which the psalmist calls “fullness of Joy,” and that Jesus calls, “Entering into the joy of the Lord.”

On earth, we experience pleasures—sometimes such great pleasures that we wish we could repeat them a hundred times. But earthly pleasures don’t last.

In God’s presence—the psalmist says—are pleasures forevermore.

B. Some humans are so earthbound that they can’t imagine any pleasures greater than watching TV or eating a fine dinner or playing a game with friends.

But we who have discovered the goodness of God know that we have something to look forward to that is far, far better than anything we will leave behind.

Here is how one author describes Heaven:

“Heaven is a community of those who love God and whom God loves. It is like a weaving in which each [of us is a] thread [which] touches every other thread in a spark of loving light, so that the whole web shines like a field of stars” (Jeffrey Burton Russell, A History of Heaven.)

Someday we will live with saints and angels in the Paradise of God. It will be a life of ever new discoveries and ever new delights, and it will never end. We will see Jesus, and we will be like him, for we will see him as he is (1 John 3:2).

No matter how hard life becomes, that’s something to look forward to.