Psalm 16
You Will Not Abandon My Soul
A MIKTAM OF DAVID.
Preserve 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.”
As for the saints in the land, they are the excellent ones, in whom is all my delight.
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.
(v1-4)
Don’t mind me, just continuing on the path of… reprogramming. Resetting my mind, and consequently, my body, and consequently, my being, by way of the Word.
Let faith arise.
This is another one of David’s Psalms. In other Psalms he calls out to God in repentance, as in Psalm 51. Just recently we wrote about Psalm 38, and Psalm 69, where we lay out how David was a whole lot more aware of his hopelessness, and chooses to respond, not with abandon, but with full dependence upon God.
Here we read another one of these Psalms with similar themes to the latter, and, I must say, David has had a nasty habit of getting into encounters far beyond his capability to handle, no?
Preserve 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.”
In this case we read about how David just goes straight to the point; asking for help, declaring God is in whom he takes refuge. He calls out to Him, proclaiming to Him and in writing, that He is his Lord… and, that next line – ‘I have no good apart from you’.
I’m reminded of how, one generation later, Solomon, David’s son who would be king after him, would say in one of his writings, of how ‘The blessing of the LORD makes rich, and He adds no sorrow with it.’ (Proverbs 10:22)
No strings attached. And putting it all together, we could say the following: We have no good apart from God, and God adds no sorrow with His blessing. On the other hand, we can also say, we have only sorrow apart from God, and God’s blessings are good.
It also feels like, upon reflection and realizations of His blessings (especially how all blessings lead us to realizing Christ, the blessing of blessings), we would exhort as David would – and, surely, as Thomas would right after seeing the holes in Christ’s hands and side: ‘You ARE my Lord, my Lord and my God!’
Perhaps it also works the other way around as well – In moments when we meditate on the Lord, and His goodness, and His grace; When we intentionally take time to think of, and eventually appreciate Jesus Christ and His finished work, I suppose our eyes would be open, not only to how we have ‘no good apart from (Him)’, but also, more importantly, how all-encompassing His goodness extends to all things concerning us.
As for the saints in the land, they are the excellent ones, in whom is all my delight.
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.
Through Christ, we’ve been proclaimed righteous unto eternal life, and are saints, not just when our earthly bodies expire, but ‘saints IN the land’, meaning here and now. And, see, not only do we celebrate our blood-bought, absolute right-standing with God, but here we also see that through Christ, our Father delights in us!
And I venture to say that this realization – of how all His delight is in us – is a major, if not the ONLY catalyst, source and foundation of excellence. I mean, if our perfect and obviously excellent God intentionally delights in us in spite of His excellent upon excellent, thrice holy standards, then surely we shouldn’t be operating from fear of not hitting the marks of excellence set by others…
…No, because in HIM we live, in HIM we move, and in HIM we have our being, we strive to be excellent! We operate from a standpoint of confidence, because our excellent God delights in us! We do what we do from a foundation of security, because Christ paid a great price to guarantee it!
And this just continues to resonate with us, even as we realize, through the next verse, of our state before we began believing in Christ.
We wouldn’t even entertain the idea of being delighted upon, much less being or moving in excellence; We’d lower our own standards of excellence and/or we’d take it upon ourselves to… well, delight upon ourselves – even go as far as to force other people to appreciate us, it seems.
This seems to be the cause and effect of our deeper state ‘before Christ’ – that is, that our sorrows shall only keep multiplying, and on top of that, any efforts we would make to ‘reach’ the divine would fall short.
David says to God, ‘You are my Lord; I have no good apart from you.’
Sin as early as the garden of Eden proclaims, ‘I am my own Lord, and I have good apart from you.’
Good luck with that.
I’d love to continue, but for lack of time, I’ll end here. I’d like to just say, before heading out, that I really appreciate how the Word just… well, it ‘keeps’ us, if you know what I mean.
It keeps us calm while the rest of the world tries to rob our peace.
It keeps us sane while sin that dwells within tries in vain to ‘revive us’ back to it.
The Word keeps us encouraged, and it allows us in turn to encourage others, particularly those who are apparently going through so much more than we are.
The Word keeps us consistent, no matter how chaotic this reality is.
Truly, and indeed, it is as the Psalmist says – This Word, this Scripture is a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path; And while the written Bible is just so full of wisdom in all of its pages, its value infinitely increases, as we understand Christ, the Word made flesh, the Living Word who dwells within us.
Father, thank You, for through Your Word our minds are renewed, and all things are transformed by the renewing of our minds. Let the reprogramming continue. In Jesus’ name, amen.
See you guys at the next post. Be blessed.
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