Psalm 16: 1-2 & 11: A Refuge, a Path of Life, and Pleasures Forevermore

INTRODUCTION

We live in a dangerous world.

Sometimes we think that we live in the worst of times. Every day our news sources bring us more stories of tragedies.

But the world has always been dangerous. In most ways, people in ancient times faced more dangers than we do.

Lives were short and hard.

Historians estimate that a third of the babies died within their first year of life.

Many mothers died giving birth.

People were subject to frequent famines, plagues, epidemics, wars, and raids by bandits.

Diseases that we now can cure with a pill or simple surgery were death sentences.

In Bible times, walls surrounded towns of any size, and the gates were locked at night to keep out marauders.

As you read the psalms you notice how many of the psalmists ask for protection against enemies.

I. Psalm 16 begins:

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” (vv1-2).

A. A refuge is a place of safety in a chaotic world—a place of quietness in a noisy, confusing, oppressive world.

The word “refuge” is a favorite way the psalmists expressed their trust in God.

In the 150 psalms, God is called the believer’s refuge 50 times. That’s not counting the times when the idea is expressed by another word that means the same thing—like “stronghold” or “fortress.”

When I got to Korea the first place where I slept was in a bunker. Our bunker was cut into the side of a mountain. Huge logs lay across the front and sandbags were in front of the logs. The roof was more logs and more sandbags and dirt.

No matter how many artillery rounds came in, you were safe inside a bunker.

When Charlotte and I visited Wales, we saw medieval castles. They were surrounded by moats filled with water and accessible by a drawbridge.

If an enemy came, the people in the village would come inside the castle walls and be safe, at least until the food or water ran out.

People still seek security from the uncertainties and dangers of life.

Some people find security in their bank accounts and stock portfolios

Some people find refuge from their fears by thinking only about today. “Let tomorrow take care of itself,” they say. I heard a woman who was over 100 being interviewed on the radio. The interviewer asked her if she ever thought about death. She said, “No, I can’t do anything about it, so I don’t think about it.”

Some people find refuge in their sense that they are better than most people. Their feeling of superiority gives them a sense of security.

But we who trust the Lord find our security in God.

St. Paul reassures his friends in his letter to the Romans:

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?

Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution,

or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?...

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors

through him who loved us.

For I am sure that neither death, or life,

nor angels, nor principalities,

nor things present, nor things to come,

nor powers, nor height, nor depth,

nor anything else in all creation,

will be able to separate us

from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 8:35-39).

To take refuge in God means to trust in God’s goodness, to be assured of his power, and to live depending always on God.

B. The psalmist writes, “You are my Lord. I have no good apart from you.”

To him God was supreme. Apart from God, nothing could be considered “good.”

We enjoy all the good things in life—friends, food, knowledge, wealth, pleasures—as gifts from God, to be enjoyed with thankfulness to the Lord.

God is our “Lord” because he claims us as belonging to him.

The psalmist who wrote Psalm 123 wrote,

As the eyes of servants look to the hand of their master,

as the eyes of a maid to the hand of her mistress,

so our eyes look to the Lord our God,

until he has mercy upon us.

It is not demeaning to think of ourselves as God’s servants.

As a loving master cares for his servants, so our Lord cares for us.

When we accept Jesus as our “Lord,” he takes charge of us and guides along the path of life.

Because he loves us so, it is our pleasure to make it our aim to please him in all that we do.
Christ's service is perfect freedom. In his will is our peace.

When the psalmist says, “I have no good apart from you,” he doesn’t mean that he is always thinking and always talking about “religion.” He means that God is his supreme good.

God is not in competition with other good things, but we see all the good things in our lives as good because they are gifts from God.

We believers do most of the same things that other people do, but we do what we do with the intention to honor God.

If we watch television or read novels, we choose programs or books that will nourish our souls. Often I have closed a book thinking, I’m a better person for having read this story.

Psychologists have proved that reading good fiction can give us insights into the needs of people around us and help us to feel the sorrows and joys of others.

Reading a good story or watching a good story on television can inspire us—or it can also draw us away from God. So we must seek God’s will in these choices as well as in everything else.

Some of you play cards or dominoes or Bingo. When you play games as a Christian, your motivation is not to beat someone—not to prove that you are better than someone else. You play your game because it is a way to have a good time with friends. The game can be an opportunity to offer friendship to someone who would otherwise be lonely.

Doing what we do with the intention to honor God gives purpose to life. It adds to the enjoyment of our pleasures. It helps us to see opportunities to serve others—and for us Christians, serving others is the true purpose for living.

II. Charlotte’s father came from Wales. He died when Charlotte was 2 ½ years old. We first saw his gravestone when the time came, not so many years ago, to bury her mother near the farm where she had grown up. On the gravestone was the last verse of our psalm:

Thou dost show me the path of life;

in thy presence there is fullness of joy,

in thy right hand are pleasures for evermore.

A. We who have given ourselves to Jesus are on a path that leads to Life—Eternal Life. Jesus walks with us, every step of the way.

Sometimes we don’t feel him to be present, but he is with us all the same.

As Companion, he is walking with us to our Homeland.

In the mists ahead of us—we can’t see it yet—is the Holy City, the New Jerusalem, where we will live with the saints and angels and dear friends, and with our Lord Jesus himself.

Sometimes the way becomes wearisome. We may feel ourselves to be alone. Other times we feel that Jesus is very close. But Jesus is always with us. He promised to be with us, even to the end of the world.

B. In God’s presence there is fullness of Joy, in his right hand are pleasures for evermore.

The Bible speaks of heaven as entering into the joy of the Lord.

I have read that somewhere is Greece is a tombstone of an ancient believer named Atticus.

Below the name “Atticus” is written: “My soul dwells in goodness.”

We know nothing more of Atticus.

Atticus had doubtless experienced disappointment and trouble in those difficult times in which he lived.

But his troubles are now behind him, and—according to the testimony of the friend who set up his gravestone—his soul dwells in goodness.

Someone said, “In this life drops of joy enter into us; in heaven we will enter into joy.”

On this earth we experience goodness as God comes into our lives.

Someday—like Atticus—we will enter into goodness.

CONCLUSION

Some years ago Charlotte and I visited her Aunt Betty and Uncle Lloyd in Ft. Dodge.

It was near the end of Uncle Lloyd’s life.

He was lying in a hospital bed in the living room of their apartment.

That morning, as his nurse arrived, Uncle Lloyd roused himself and said to her in a loud voice: “I want to go home!”

I thought, O dear, Uncle Lloyd is becoming confused.

But his nurse understood. She said, “Now Lloyd, you can’t go home until God calls you.”

Uncle Lloyd knew—what some of us are slow to learn—that this world is not our true home.

I have read that there is Christian village in Africa where the believers never say of their dead: “They have passed away.”

They always say of believers who have died: “They have arrived.”

We’re like a seed waiting in the good earth—waiting to come up and bloom in God’s Heavenly Garden.

We are God’s creatures, and heaven is what we are made for.

We don’t know all the things we will do in heaven—but we do know that whatever we do in worship or work or play—it will be enjoyable! Yes, heaven will be fun!

Because in God’s presence is fullness of joy, and at his right hand are pleasures for evermore.