Kootenai Church Morning Worship

Psalm 16:1–8:
1 Preserve me, O God, for I take refuge in You.
2 I said to the Lord, “You are my Lord; I have no good besides You.”
3 As for the saints who are in the earth, they are the majestic ones in whom is all my delight.
4 The sorrows of those who have bartered for another god will be multiplied; I shall not pour out their drink offerings of blood, nor will I take their names upon my lips.
5 The Lord is the portion of my inheritance and my cup; You support my lot.
6 The lines have fallen to me in pleasant places; indeed, my heritage is beautiful to me.
7 I will bless the Lord who has counseled me; indeed, my mind instructs me in the night.
8 I have set the Lord continually before me; because He is at my right hand, I will not be shaken. (NASB)
Our psalm here highlights the folly and evil of idolatry in verse 4 when he says, “The sorrows of those who have bartered for another god will be multiplied.” And truly, idolatry is an evil thing. It's not just folly, but to refuse to give God thanks, to trust and honor Him, to refuse to exalt Him, and to glorify and exalt those things that are not God is an act of rebellion and insolence and mutiny and sabotage and betrayal that is of the highest order.
And it's foolishness as well. I mean, what do we get from idolatry? “The sorrows of those who have bartered for another god will be multiplied.” The idolater thinks that they are doing themselves something good, but instead they are only multiplying their sorrows. Idolatry harms the worshipper, for it takes from the worshipper the very best thing that the worshipper could have, which is God Himself, and replaces it with something that is not. And so the worshipper thinks he is doing good for himself when in fact he is suffering loss. He is trading something that is superior for something that is far inferior to God Himself, trading the Giver for the gift.
Listen to the description of Israel's idolatry in Jeremiah 2. You don't have to turn there, but I'll read it to you. Jeremiah 2:7–13:
7 “I brought you into the fruitful land to eat its fruit and its good things. But you came and defiled My land, and My inheritance you made an abomination.
8 The priests did not say, ‘Where is the Lord?’ And those who handle the law did not know Me; the rulers also transgressed against Me, and the prophets prophesied by Baal and walked after things that did not profit.
9 Therefore I will yet contend with you,” declares the Lord, “and with your sons’ sons I will contend.
10 For cross to the coastlands of Kittim and see, and send to Kedar and observe closely and see if there has been such a thing as this!
11 Has a nation changed gods when they were not gods? But My people have changed their glory for that which does not profit.
12 Be appalled, O heavens, at this, and shudder, be very desolate,” declares the Lord.
13 “For My people have committed two evils: they have forsaken Me, the fountain of living waters, to hew for themselves cisterns, broken cisterns that can hold no water.” (NASB)
You hear the language in that passage, that denunciation of idolatry, of exchanging, changing gods, changing glory, exchanging one glory for another glory. It's the language used in Romans 1:21 where Paul condemns the idolatry and the depravity of man by saying,
21 For even though they [that is, the fallen and pagan man] knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened.
22 Professing to be wise, they became fools,
23 and [listen; here's the language] exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures. (Rom. 1:21–23 NASB)
That language from Paul is taken directly from that imagery in Jeremiah 2 and is also almost a word-for-word citation of Psalm 106:19–22, which read this: “They made a calf in Horeb and worshiped a molten image. Thus they exchanged their glory for the image of an ox that eats grass. They forgot God their Savior, who had done great things in Egypt, wonders in the land of Ham and awesome things by the Red Sea.” Imagine the folly of turning away from an ever-flowing, endless stream of cold, pure, refreshing, living water so that you can do the work of hewing out of stone a cistern and then haul water to that cistern and dump it into the cistern and watch it drain out almost as fast as you pour it in. What fool would do such a thing?
Imagine the folly of trading gold bars for chocolate bars. Imagine the folly of worshipping wood and forsaking the Creator of wood or instead pursuing earthly, temporary pleasures at the expense of eternal pleasures and eternal glory. What type of a fool would do that? The type of a fool that we all are by nature. That's the type of fool. For that is the human heart, inclined to do that very thing. Our psalm here, Psalm 16, describes the true treasure that the idolater forsakes, and Yahweh is that treasure.
Today we're looking at verses 5–8. In verses 1–4, we saw that Yahweh is the trust and refuge of His people. Today, in verses 5–8, Yahweh is the treasure and reward for His people. We're going to have three points today. David first shows his love for Yahweh by describing Him as his priceless gift in verses 5–6. Yahweh is our priceless gift in verses 5–6, our prudent guide in verse 7, and our powerful guard in verse 8. A priceless gift, a prudent guide, and a powerful guard for us.
Let's look first now at verses 5–6. Let's read them again together. “The Lord is the portion of my inheritance and my cup; You support my lot. The lines have fallen to me in pleasant places; indeed, my heritage is beautiful to me.” Notice the words that are used. There are a number of words there. Those verses are loaded with references to an appointed or allotted inheritance. Look at verse 5—portion, inheritance, cup, and lot. Verse 6—lines, pleasant places, and heritage. And Yahweh is at the center of all of it.
Now all of that language, those words—portion, inheritance, cup, lot, lines, pleasant places, and heritage—all of those words conjure up in the mind of a Jewish reader the event in their history when, after coming out of Egypt and wandering in the wilderness for forty years, they came into the promised land, and then after God had subdued all of their enemies, put all of their enemies under their feet, and given them possession of the cities, the vines that they never planted, a land flowing with milk and honey, Joshua went about the work of divvying up the land by tribe. So they would take the tribe of Issachar and Judah and Zebulun and Simeon, and they would give to each of the descendants of those twelve patriarchs an allotment or a portion of the land of Israel. And God, by His sovereign hand, divided up that land according to tribe. Joshua 19:9: “The inheritance of the sons of Simeon was taken from the portion [listen to these words—inheritance, portion] of the sons of Judah, for the share of the sons of Judah was too large for them; so the sons of Simeon received an inheritance in the midst of Judah's inheritance.”
And so this language of heritage, lines, lot, portion, all of that comes out of Israel's history when the entire land of Israel, which was given by Yahweh as a gift to His people in fulfillment partially of the Abrahamic covenant, that land was then divvied up amongst the tribes. And between tribes, land was not to be transferred. The allotment given to one tribe was to go to the descendants of that tribe and never to be transferred to another tribe. They each got their own portion, their own inheritance, by God's grace. Each family got to hand down to the next generation their allotment or their heritage. So in the Jewish mind, the idea of the land being given to them and possessing that land, it was very significant because the stature of a Jewish man or a Jewish family in that cultural context rested upon the allotment or the inheritance that they had been given. If you did something foolish to forfeit up and give up your land, that would be a shameful thing, but to have that land and to possess that land and to enjoy it as a measure of God's goodness and gift to you was a blessed thing and something that the Jews clung tightly to. They loved that. They enjoyed that. It was significant to them.
In fact, the land, their portion of the land, was the key to their prosperity and their provision. To be given a piece of land meant you had something on which you could be secure, something that you could guard and defend, something that you could use to provide for your needs. And so your allotment was also the measure of your sustenance and your provision. You could work that land. You could use that land. You could commercialize that land to provide for you and for your families and for your descendants. So to a Jew, their reputation and standing in society was tied to their inheritance. So any Jew who had a portion of land had received that from his father, who had received it from his father, who had received it from his father, and then that Jew got to hand that down to his descendants and to his sons as part of the inheritance.
So it's very significant language that's being used here. And David is saying in verse 5, “The Lord is the portion of my inheritance and my cup.” Now it's interesting, and I'm not going to develop this because I don't have time to develop this today, but I just want to throw this out as something that you can look into. It's interesting that David uses the language that would have described the inheritance of the priestly tribe of Aaron. Remember, Aaron's descendants, the Levites, didn't have their own allotment in the land. The Levites were to be dispersed amongst the people, and the Levites could say the Lord is their inheritance. In fact, that comes right out of the book of Numbers. Yahweh was the inheritance of the priestly tribe of Levi.
But here you have on the lips of the Lord Jesus, prophetically speaking, words that would describe Him affirming something that was true of a priestly tribe. And then you also have Him being the King who is described here, the descendant of David. So you have the words of the psalm being used as if it were the words of the Lord Jesus being a priest because our Lord Jesus is both a priest and a king. That's a significant kind of allusion there because Peter says in Acts 2 that David is saying this psalm of the Lord Jesus. So you have the Lord Jesus then saying that His inheritance, His portion, is Yahweh.
All right, what does the word cup mean? We're going to develop each one of these references—portion, inheritance, heritage, cup, etc.—but there's a couple of them that are significant. What does it mean when he says, “You are my cup,” and when he says of the Lord, “You are the portion of my inheritance and my cup”? The imagery here—and obviously he's using cup here in a symbolic way to symbolize something. In Scripture, the idea of a cup being handed to someone sort of was emblematic of something that was one's destiny, something that was poured out for one or given to one or appointed for somebody, as if somebody pours out something into the cup and hands it to you. That was the idea. So by David saying the Lord is his cup, he is describing here something that God by His providence and sovereignty had apportioned off for David and given to him. Yahweh is my cup, He is my allotted inheritance, as it were, simply another word for that which was given to him and appointed for him. His destiny, as it were.
And this idea of a cup is used of both what is given to the wicked as well as what is given to the righteous. For instance, listen to this from Psalm 11:6: “Upon the wicked He will rain snares; fire and brimstone and burning wind will be the portion of their cup.” What is appointed for the wicked and handed to the wicked? It's a cup of fire, brimstone, burning wind. Psalm 75:8: “For a cup is in the hand of the Lord, and the wine foams; it is well mixed, and He pours out of this; surely all the wicked of the earth must drain and drink down its dregs.” There you have the idea of what is apportioned or given and then handed to the wicked.
But the idea of a cup is also something used to describe what is given as a blessing to the righteous. Psalm 23:5: “You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; You have anointed my head with oil; my cup overflows.” There it describes what is a blessing and what is good.
And notice David says in verse 5, “The Lord is the portion of my inheritance and my cup.” Now look at the last phrase: “You support my lot.” That word support means to take something, to uphold it, to hold it in your hand. It's David's way of describing the security of what God has given to him and granted to him. In other words, it's not as if this inheritance that has been given to David, Yahweh Himself, is going to be taken away from David by some circumstance or some event or some situation that David is in. Even though David was in circumstances that threatened his own health and life and even his own security there, he is aware that that which God has given to him, the cup of Yahweh Himself, his portion, God Himself is the one who upholds that. You support my lot. That which You have given to me, You also keep for me.
Now that is significant because it means that God is not only our treasure, He is the surety of our treasure. In other words, He is what is given to us, granted to us, and He is the one who has secured everything granted to us. And that's why we need a God that is described in verses 1–2. He is El, the mighty God. He is Yahweh, the personal, promise-keeping, covenant-keeping God. And He is Adonai, the sovereign Master of all things. That is the type of God who Himself upholds our lot.
In verse 6, “The lines have fallen to me in pleasant places; indeed, my heritage is beautiful to me.” The word lines there can refer to two different things. It's used two different ways in connection with ideas like this, like inheritance and heritage, etc. It was sometimes used to describe the strings or the ropes that were used to mark off an inheritance. You would run out the string and trace out a line, and that would be your inheritance. You would mark that off with a boundary, as it were. It's also used to describe the lines that you might put on a lot or draw in the dirt to mark off what has been given to you. It could be used here to describe both the lines that God has given, the strings used for surveying it out, as well as the lines that God has established for me have fallen in pleasant places.
One would go out with an inheritance that was given to them and they would measure it off and draw the lines, as it were, describe that out, and then they would survey that apportionment, that inheritance, and see if it was good or bad, and they would assess the quality of it. So David uses the language here of the lines that have fallen to him. Notice he's sort of passive in this. It is something that is handed to him, granted to him, an allotment that falls into his hands. That allotment, David says, has fallen to me and it is pleasant. Pleasant, that's the quality. It's pleasant. “Indeed,” verse 6 says, “my heritage is beautiful to me.”
Allen Ross, in his commentary on the Psalms, says this: “David is saying that what he has in God and what he has received from God is satisfying and pleasurable. The more he sees of it, the more he is convinced it is the finest possession anyone could have.” That's what's described in Psalm 73, which Josh read right before our final song there. “Whom have I in heaven but You? And besides You, I desire nothing on earth. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever” (vv. 25–26).
You notice the word pleasant in verse 6. “The lines have fallen to me in pleasant places.” Look down at verse 11: “You will make known to me the path of life; in Your presence is fullness of joy; in Your right hand there are pleasures forever.” It's the same word, pleasant and pleasures. It's the same word. So David is saying there that God is pleasant. He is delightful. He is happiness. He is beauty, sweet, and agreeable. That's what the word means. And God is the one, as our portion, our inheritance, who is all of those things. And then in verse 11 he says at the right hand of God there are pleasantries or pleasance, pleasures, forevermore. David could look at Yahweh as his inheritance and just say, “That is pleasure.” He is my pleasure. He is my happiness. He is my joy, my delight. I am content with that. And at His right hand there are pleasantries and pleasures forevermore. In other words, God is both the thing that is pleasant and He is the one who dispenses every pleasant thing. Yahweh Himself is happiness and pleasantry and pleasurable and an inheritance. And in His presence is happiness and pleasantries and delights and pleasures forevermore. He is both the giver of all pleasantness and pleasure and He is the source of pleasure for every believer.
Every gift that God gives in time comes to us from the right hand of a God who is Himself a pleasant place. And He has promised that from that same hand He is going to give to you and I pleasures forevermore. Think about some of the pleasures that you enjoy in this creation. The pleasure of good food, good company, laughter, song, fellowship, adventure, excitement, discovery, building, commerce, people, family, friends, worship, fellowship. I could go on all day, couldn't I? Just to name some of them. Good food, good drink, hobbies.
But if you think this is good, wait till you see the new creation. When you and I get resurrected bodies and we are placed in a new heavens and a New Earth in which only righteousness dwells and there is no possibility of death and no possibility that anything will enter into that to spoil it or to pervert it or to destroy it, and then we have a God who takes delight in dispensing pleasures to His people forever, one pleasure after another, one delight, one enjoyment, one pleasantry, one experience—all of the good things that we enjoy in this creation, we get them on steroids in the creation to come. None of them can ever be polluted. And all of that from the God who dispenses those pleasures to us in this life, and they are tokens, they are tastes, they are symbols, shadows of what is to come. That is David's hope. God Himself, Yahweh Himself, is my portion, He is my inheritance, and furthermore, He is the one who will dispense to those in His presence those same pleasures forevermore. Those are the delights.
And so it's obvious that David would have no desire for another god and condemn it in verse 4 when he says that those who barter for another god, their sorrows are multiplied. Why would you barter for another God when you have a God who Himself is your inheritance, who Himself is everything to please your heart and to please your soul? In Sunday school this morning David was talking about the sin of idolatry and trying to find our satisfaction in things that are not God. That is the heart of idolatry. That is to look at Yahweh, to look at His Word, to look at the delights that He offers in just being in relationship with Him and knowing Him through His Word and in His Son and to say it is not enough. I need more. I need drink. I need sex. I need this, I need that, whatever it is. I need entertainment. I need amusement. I need more possessions. I need more people. I need more experiences. I need more reputation. I need more prestige. I need more money. I need more houses and lands. All of that is idolatry because it refuses to acknowledge that Yahweh is enough.
David says the sorrows of those who barter for another god will be multiplied. And then he compares the idols of the nations, those other gods, with God, who is our inheritance. So the question is this: is your heart satisfied with God alone? Is He enough? Is knowing Him, obeying Him, rejoicing in Him, and being satisfied with Him enough?
How do you make Him enough if He is not? Well, that's verse 7–8. It comes down to the counsel of God's Word in verse 7 and then setting Yahweh continually before us in verse 8. So we see first in verses 5–6 that Yahweh is the believer's priceless gift. Second, He is the believer's prudent guide. Verse 7: “I will bless the Lord who has counseled me; indeed, my mind instructs me in the night.” The one who offers counsel and gives counsel, advice, and guidance here is Yahweh. “I will bless Yahweh who has counseled me [or guided me]; indeed, my mind instructs me in the night.” Yahweh Himself is the source of all wisdom and guidance to His people. Psalm 73:24 says, “With Your counsel You will guide me, and afterward receive me to glory.” So God Himself is our sustenance, our apportionment, our inheritance in this life. And He is the one who counsels us or guides us.
“My mind,” he says, “instructs me in the night” (v. 7). What does he mean by that? My mind instructs me in the night. That's a bit mysterious until you start to sort of flesh out what it is that David might be describing there. By the way, if you're reading the King James version, it says, “My reins also instruct me in the night,” r-e-i-n-s. Just out of curiosity, how many of you even knew that was a word before right now? One guy from a King James only church, OK. I had to look that up. My reins instruct me in the night. It just describes the heart or the mind, the inner man. But it made sense five hundred years ago or so when they translated the King James. It's just describing the place of our affection, the thinking, the thoughts, the meditation of the inner person.
David is not suggesting here that our heart is our guide, as if he were simply saying, “Look, follow your heart. Yahweh is my counselor. Follow your heart. My heart just gives me guidance in the middle of the night. It speaks to me and I jump up and do whatever my heart tells me to do.” That's not what he's saying. He's not suggesting that we follow inner promptings or inclinations or that our mind and our heart and our thinking is sufficient for counsel or that God gives us and directs us through ideas that pop into our minds in the middle of the night. He's not suggesting any of those things. For David, God's Word was the means of counsel, guidance, and advice, correction, admonition, direction. These things come from Scripture.
So what David means is something similar to what he describes in Psalm 1:2, that the blessed or happy or righteous man delights in the law of the Lord, and in His law he meditates day and night. That's what David has in mind. At night my mind instructs me. Psalm 119:24: “Your testimonies also are my delight; they are my counselors.” God's Word is His counsel, and it is the ordained means by which He guides and gives counsel. So the righteous man takes the Word of God as his meditation day and night. He puts that Word in his heart and in his mind to feed his inner man and give him the spiritual sustenance that he needs so that when he lies down in bed, his mind is trafficking in the truth that has informed him throughout the day.
So David is not saying, “Whatever idea pops into my mind in the middle of the night, that I take as a word from God.” But he is saying, “The Word of God, which I have hidden in my heart that I might not sin against Him, that Word I bring to my mind and I make my mind meditate and churn on that Word day and night.” So when David lays down in his bed at night, he is thinking about the Word of God and meditating upon that. And in his heart and in his mind, he receives counsel, not by private revelation but instead because of the revelation that he meditates on day and night.
Using your mind in that way as you're drifting off to sleep, that's better than rehashing the day's stresses, anxieties, and tragedies, isn't it? That's a better way to fall asleep than replaying conversations that were futile or frustrating. It’s a better way of falling asleep than reciting all the news headlines of the day or scrolling through a Twitter feed until your eyes start to droop and you're ready to fall asleep. But instead David is describing here meditating on the Word of God in bed. Psalm 63:6: “When I remember You on my bed, I meditate on You in the night watches.” That's what he's describing.
Psalm 17:3—that's the very next psalm. “You have tried my heart; You have visited me by night; You have tested me and You find nothing; I have purposed that my mouth will not transgress.” Meditating upon God's Word at night.
In Psalm 77:6, Asaph says, “I will remember my song in the night; I will meditate with my heart.”
Listen to Psalm 119:148: “My eyes anticipate the night watches, that I may meditate on Your word.” My eyes anticipate the night watches so that I may meditate on Your Word. It's as if David is saying, “I am glad when all of the busyness of the day can be gone so that I can lay down in bed, stillness, quietness, without interruption, and just meditate upon God's truth.” Yahweh is our counselor. We focus our mind to think upon the truth of God in the heart, in the inner man, meditating upon Scripture, and that is the means by which our minds and our hearts instruct us as they are informed by the truth of God's Word.
So Yahweh is the believer's priceless gift, verses 5–6, and Yahweh is the believer's prudent guide, and now verse 8, He is a powerful guard. “I have set the Lord continually before me; because He is at my right hand, I will not be shaken.” Now, as with meditating upon God's truth in the night watches, this takes some intentionality, decision, some deliberateness and thoughtfulness to approach living life this way, to set Yahweh continually before us, to see everywhere that we turn a God who is worthy of delighting in, who is Himself delightful, happy, pleasant, and enjoyable. We have to take that God and put that God continually before us because you and I are constantly doing this—turning. The minute we turn, we have to take God, Yahweh, and put Him before us. And then we turn back and we turn again. And then we have to grab that God and put Him constantly before us.
It takes intentionality to make the heart and mind focus on God in such a way as to say, “I'm living my life for the glory of God, coram Deo, before the face of God, always in His presence.” That is easy to forget as we're walking through life day-to-day, busily involved in this activity and that activity, and then we get all the way through the day and realize, Man, I have hardly stopped to pray or to think about what God would think of the things that I'm doing and the decisions that I'm making. And so the believer's constant discipline is to place Yahweh continually before us. And then in the activities of our day, to pause as often as we can and to think, Am I doing this for the glory of God? Am I doing this in obedience to my God? Are my motives correct? Am I doing this before the face of God? Can I bring God joy and pleasure in this activity? And if I can't, then I ought not to be doing it. That is what it means to live our lives constantly before the face of God.
David says in verse 8, “Because He is at my right hand, I will not be shaken.” He's describing there a security and a safety that he has with God at his right hand. The idea of a right hand in Scripture is one that you see frequently. Christ is exalted to the Father's right hand. It’s used of a position of power and authority. The right hand was the hand that held the sword for a soldier. So when we describe the right hand of something, it's a place of prestige and honor.
It also, in the the soldier's vernacular, can describe a place of vulnerability and weakness ironically because a soldier would hold their shield with the left hand which meant that the left side was guarded and shielded. It was very easy to move the shield. But the right side that held the sword was also vulnerable to attack from the right side. So when David says, “The Lord is at my right hand,” he is describing Yahweh being at the place of his vulnerability and weakness, where he is open to attack. David sees God as before him continually and at his right hand, where he is weak and vulnerable.
Psalm 121:5: “The Lord is your keeper; the Lord is your shade on your right hand.” That's the safety and security, the preservation, the shield that is described there. He is at your right hand. And so David finds security in that and says, “I will not be shaken.” He knows that God supports his lot, he knows that God is in his presence, and he knows that in God's will and providence he is safe and secure because Yahweh is at his right hand.
Now does that mean then that David would never face hostility, adversity, trial, or difficulty? Is that what he means? He can't possibly mean that and I'll tell you why. Because verse 8 is the very first verse that is quoted as referring to the Lord Jesus Christ in Acts 2 when Peter cites this on the day of Pentecost. Peter says in Acts 2:25, “For David says of Him [that is, David is speaking of Christ],” and then he begins the quotation with verse 8: “I saw the Lord always in my presence; for He is at my right hand, so that I will not be shaken.” In other words, verse 8 speaks of Christ; for Christ, Yahweh was continually before Him and Yahweh was at His right hand. And for Christ, He was not forsaken or shaken. But He was most certainly persecuted, wasn't He? And hated? Did Jesus face trials and difficulties? He did. In fact, He was killed. But in spite of the trials and the difficulties, Yahweh was at His right hand, sustaining His servant, the Lord Jesus Christ, through all of that.
So verses 9, 10, and 11 are also quoted as referring to the Lord Jesus Christ. Verse 10 can only refer to Christ—“For You will not abandon my soul to Sheol; nor will You allow Your Holy One to undergo decay.” David decayed. Christ did not decay in the grave. Therefore this passage, this psalm, is describing the Lord Jesus Christ. So though Christ was persecuted and hated and faced hostility and was even killed, He was never forsaken by Yahweh.
And you and I, though we may be persecuted and hated and face hostility and trials and even be abandoned by everyone else, we can have the same confidence that Yahweh Himself is at our right hand, guarding us and shielding us. He is not abandoned who has God at his right hand, and he is never alone to whom the Lord has promised, “I will never leave you nor forsake you” (Heb. 13:5 ESV). Though we may suffer in this life as Christ did, we know that ultimately we will not be shaken, we will not be forsaken, we will receive our inheritance, our eternal glory, and at His right hand there are pleasures forevermore. You and I will not be abandoned to the grave because Christ was not abandoned to the grave. And that's what verses 9–11 are describing, and we're going to look at those next week on Resurrection Sunday.