Kootenai Church Morning Worship

Will you please turn to the book of Acts, chapter 2? You may have thought you would hear me say the book of Psalms, to Psalm 16, but we're going to start today in Acts 2:22. And while you're turning there, I'll give you a little bit of context. We're going to read the account of part of the apostle Peter's sermon on the day of Pentecost. After the Lord had ascended back to Heaven, the pouring out of the Spirit was on the day of Pentecost. And the phenomena that attended that event caused the unbelievers who were present watching that to charge the apostles there who were speaking in tongues with being drunk at 9 a.m. in the morning. And Peter got up to correct that and he said, no, what you're seeing is nothing less than the fulfillment of the prophet Joel, Joel 2. And Peter quotes from the book of Joel to show that ultimately this was in fulfillment to God's promise to send His Spirit after the ascension of the Messiah. And Peter winds up his quotation of Joel 2 in verse 21, where he promises, “It shall be that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”
And then Peter pivots to a presentation of Christ and who He is and what He has done beginning in verse 22.
22 Men of Israel, listen to these words: Jesus the Nazarene, a man attested to you by God with miracles and wonders and signs which God performed through Him in your midst, just as you yourselves know—
23 this Man, delivered over by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God, you nailed to a cross by the hands of godless men and put Him to death.
24 But God raised Him up again, putting an end to the agony of death, since it was impossible for Him to be held in its power.
25 For David says of Him, “I saw the Lord always in my presence; for He is at my right hand, so that I will not be shaken.
26 Therefore my heart was glad and my tongue exulted; moreover my flesh also will live in hope;
27 because You will not abandon my soul to Hades, nor allow Your Holy One to undergo decay.
28 You have made known to me the ways of life; You will make me full of gladness with Your presence.”
29 Brethren, I may confidently say to you regarding the patriarch David that he both died and was buried, and his tomb is with us to this day.
30 And so, because he was a prophet and knew that God had sworn to him with an oath to seat one of his descendants on his throne,
31 he looked ahead and spoke of the resurrection of the Christ, that He was neither abandoned to Hades, nor did His flesh suffer decay.
32 This Jesus God raised up again, to which we are all witnesses.
33 Therefore having been exalted to the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, He has poured forth this which you both see and hear.
34 For it was not David who ascended into heaven, but he himself says: “The Lord said to my Lord, ‘Sit at My right hand,
35 until I make Your enemies a footstool for Your feet.’”
36 Therefore let all the house of Israel know for certain that God has made Him both Lord and Christ—this Jesus whom you crucified. (Acts 2:22–36 NASB)
Now the verses of interest to us this morning are verses 25–28. It's a quotation from the Old Testament psalm, from Psalm 16. And Peter's argument turns on the hinge that is found in verse 27: “Because You will not abandon my soul to Hades, nor allow Your Holy One to undergo decay.” Peter's argument to that crowd of Jews that morning, that day, was rather straightforward—that this psalm, Psalm 16, describes a death. There is the mention of the soul going to Hades or Sheol, which is the place of the dead spirits. And Jesus rose in a glorified body three days after His crucifixion while David, after his death, suffered decay, and his tomb was even there with them that very day. And therefore, Peter concludes, this Jesus whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead, He is the one of whom Psalm 16 is speaking when David says, “You will not abandon my soul to Hades, nor allow Your Holy One to undergo decay” (v. 27). It couldn't have been David describing himself because David died, was buried, and he was still in his tomb, and his tomb is with us to this day. David did suffer decay. And since David did suffer decay and the promise is that a Holy One would not suffer decay, the one who rose from the dead, who never suffered decay, is the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the one of whom David was speaking in the psalm. A very straightforward argument, a very straightforward understanding of Psalm 16.
So now will you please turn to Psalm 16. We're going to look at this prophecy, which Peter cites on the day of Pentecost, in the context here of its original writing, Psalm 16. We have been in this psalm for the last three weeks, and this is our final study in Psalm 16—in fact, our final study in the Psalms, at least for the time being. We'll be doing something next week that's different from the Psalms.
And if this is your first Sunday here with us, then I want to offer you a little bit of review so that you know what we have covered so far. Psalm 16 describes Yahweh, our God, as our trust, our treasure, and our triumph. Our trust, our treasure, and our triumph. In verses 1–4, we see a pledge of trust in Yahweh's protection, and we see there that Yahweh is the trust and refuge of His people. Then in verses 5–8, we see a praise for the treasure of Yahweh's provision, where David says that Yahweh is the treasure and reward of His people. And now in verses 9–11, we're going to look at a promise of triumph by Yahweh's power, and we're going to see that Yahweh is the triumph and resurrection of His people. He is our trust and refuge, our treasure and our reward, and our triumph and our ultimate resurrection. And here David expresses his hope in life everlasting, in triumph over the grave, in triumph over death, and ultimately, down in verse 11, his hope in the pleasures and delights in a resurrected state in God's presence. And this is the hope of all who have made Yahweh their trust and their refuge.
So we're going to notice three things this morning, one from each verse. In verse 9, the believer’s resurrection hope is a personal hope. Second, in verse 10, the believer's resurrection hope is a prophesied hope. And then finally in verse 11, the believer’s resurrection hope is a pleasurable hope. There is the personal aspect of it in verse 9, it is prophesied in verse 10, and David mentions the pleasures that we will enjoy in verse 11.
So let's look first at the believer’s resurrection hope in verse 9. “Therefore my heart is glad and my glory rejoices; my flesh also will dwell securely.” Now we sort of drop in this morning at verse 9, but the very beginning of verse 9 has a therefore which points us back to the things that David has already said in the first eight verses. He has a glad heart, a reason for rejoicing. He's happy. He is merry. He is full of joy because he has Yahweh as his treasure. He describes God, Yahweh, in verse 5 as his portion and his inheritance and his cup, his lot. He describes the inheritance that he has received in God in verse 6 as being pleasant places and my heritage which is beautiful to me. In verse 8 David says, “I have set the Lord continually before me; because He is at my right hand, I will not be shaken.”
All of those statements of his confession and his confidence in verses 5–8 bring him in verse 9 to be overflowing with joy. “Therefore my heart is glad [it is happy] and my glory rejoices” (v. 9). The word is the word for glory, which means something weighty or heavy. “My glory rejoices; my flesh also will dwell securely” (v. 9). Because Yahweh is at his right hand, he knows that ultimately he will dwell securely. Though he would face death—he mentions death in verse 10, that he would go to Sheol—ultimately, David is not shaken by that but is confident that his flesh will dwell securely in verse 9.
Now, you'll notice in verse 9, he describes his flesh dwelling securely, but the question is at what point does that happen? When does that happen? Is that something that you and I can enjoy ultimately in this life? Is there anybody here this morning whose flesh dwells in security? Not a one of you does because any one of you by the end of today could have your flesh lying alongside a road or laying on a floor and your soul be in the place of the dead. There's not a one of us here whose flesh dwells securely. We are in this life as secure as we can ultimately be, because we are in God's hands, but as long as death threatens us, as long as we live under the specter of death and disease and loss, as long as it's possible for us to be separated from our bodies in this life, there is no ultimate security in this world.
We live, as Psalm 23 says, always in the valley of the shadow of death. That's not something you quote just as you're lying on your deathbed or standing next to a loved one who is passing away. We walk through the valley of the shadow of death every day in this world. Regardless of your age, regardless of your health or your condition, we are always under the specter of death. And in this world, our flesh can never dwell in security. We can never be secure in this world. Ultimately, this will only happen when we are in a resurrected state.
Notice David says, “My flesh also will dwell securely” (v. 9, emphasis added). He doesn't say, “Right now, I am dwelling securely because God is at my right hand.” David is in verse 9 looking forward to the resurrection reality that he is describing in verses 10–11. The Lord is at my right hand, He guards me, He protects me, but ultimately someday He is going to remove those guards and protections and He is going to allow me to go the way of all men, to perish. So I do not dwell in any kind of ultimate security here, but we will in the resurrected state. We will dwell in security when, as 1 Corinthians 15:53 says, this perishable puts on the imperishable and this mortal puts on immortality. “Then will come about the saying that is written, ‘Death is swallowed up in victory’” (1 Cor. 15:54). Then we will dwell in security. 1 Corinthians 15:26 says, “The last enemy that will be abolished is death.” Then we will dwell securely. Or when what is written in Revelation 21:3–4 comes about:
3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne, saying, “Behold, the tabernacle of God is among men, and He will dwell among them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself will be among them,
4 and He will wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there will no longer be any death; there will no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain; the first things have passed away. (NASB)
On resurrection morning, that is when our flesh will dwell securely. Given the context, the very next verse in verse 11, David is not describing a false sense of security that we enjoy in this world. David is describing ultimately our resurrected state. There will come a time when every enemy has been put down, death itself has been abolished, the Lord Jesus Christ reigns and rules in the eternal state, and you and I are in that eternal state in glory at God's right hand, and then we will be able to say, “Death has been swallowed up in victory. Death is no more. Death has been done away with. It has been defeated. And now, today, forever and evermore, our flesh will dwell in security.”
But death cannot be avoided here. Death is the ultimate enemy and despoils us of so much. It robs us of our friends, robs us of our loved ones, of the fruit of our labor. It takes away our opportunities, our joys, our delights. It mixes every sorrow into every joy. It limits our time and ends our progress. And ultimately, what can the righteous do in this life? And ultimately, what good is this life, even if spent in the presence of Yahweh, if ultimately we do not live again? What good is everything in this life if ultimately death ends it? If death is our greatest enemy and it has the last word, if death has the final say, if death is finally able to take everything from us and to remove us from everything that we take joy in and delight in, and if that is the final and permanent state, then what good is every other good that we enjoy in this world, in this life? What good is every other thing that God does for us and to us if ultimately death has the final say? What is the point?
Is it not then all vanity and chasing after the wind? This is why Solomon in the book of Ecclesiastes makes that statement. All of life, everything, is vanity and chasing after the wind because—it's somewhere in the middle of the book; I think it's around chapter 5 where Solomon says, “I observe the death of an animal and I observe the death of a man, and the spirit of the man and the spirit of the animal, they both go away. There seems to be no distinction between the animal and the man. And if our fate is the same as beasts, then truly what is the point? It's all vanity and chasing after the wind.” If at the end of a life lived for the glory of God, and we enjoy all of the things that we enjoy and God pours out His blessings upon us and keeps us safe, but in the end death wins, then we have lost, and God has lost. And therefore death must be conquered. Death must be swallowed up in victory. Death itself must be done away with. If death is the victor, then we will never know what it is to truly dwell in security because we don't here.
But in the resurrection, death will be no more. Therefore, David says, my heart is glad and my glory rejoices because my flesh will dwell in security. This is God's personal promise to you. This was God's personal promise to David, and therefore his heart is full of joy. Listen to the confession of Job 19. Job says, “As for me, I know that my Redeemer lives” (v. 25). Listen to how Job took the promise of resurrection, the reality of resurrection, and applied it to himself personally. This was his hope. “As for me, I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last He will take His stand on the earth. Even after my skin is destroyed, yet from my flesh I shall see God; whom I myself shall behold, and whom my eyes will see and not another. My heart faints within me!” (vv. 25–27)
Do you hear how personal that was to Job? Not just that he was going to die and his spirit was going to go into a great nothingness and be joined to some amorphous, faceless ball of energy in the sky where he would persist in some constant state of eternal humming and buzzing and be there forever. No, for Job it was a personal thing. My flesh will be destroyed. Worms will eat this corpse. But this corpse will rise again on the final day, and I with my own eyes will behold my Redeemer when my Redeemer takes His stand upon the face of the earth. That is a personal confession of personal resurrection.
The implications of the resurrection are personal. After death we will be reunited with these very same bodies in immortal form, and we will never be separated from them again. Our flesh will then in resurrected glory dwell in security. Because the resurrection hope is a personal hope, our hearts and our joys can be full of rejoicing and gladness and happiness and glory just as David describes in verse 9. You will not be forgotten. I will not be forgotten.
When I went to Bible college I had to take a systematic theology course, two years of it. I had a great teacher. In the course of that systematic theology course—I know because I've gone back and looked at the textbook that we went through and my notes—we learned all about the resurrection on the last day, the resurrection of the just and the resurrection of the unjust. So I learned in Bible college and I put it down on the test. I know because I did well in theology class. I put it down on the test that there was going to be a resurrection of the just and the unjust and that someday all believers would be resurrected again just as Christ was resurrected. I know that was part of my theology.
I remember some years into my pastoral ministry when the doctrine of resurrection became incredibly personal. It's not because I had a brush with death or watched a loved one die or anything like that. But I remember reading through a theology text and coming to the doctrine of the resurrection of all men, the righteous and the unrighteous, and it was like all of the change fell into the meter for me. It was shortly after that that I read the book Heaven by Randy Alcorn where he talks about the implications of bodily resurrection for the saints. Suddenly all of the change fell into the meter and I realized I'm going to get a resurrected body and I'm going to live in a resurrected world and I will never die. It will be this body, personally, this body, but in a glorified state. And it was like everything about my future went from being black and white to Technicolor in an instant, just like that. I knew that before, but once it became a personal doctrine to me and I understood what the implications of it were—I will tell you something—my heart was glad and my glory rejoiced. Because David is describing here in verse 9 his resurrection hope. It's a personal hope.
In verse 10, it is a prophesied hope. Psalm 16:10: “For You will not abandon my soul to Sheol; nor will You allow Your Holy One to undergo decay.” I want you to notice something about verse 9 and something about verse 10 that they have in common. In verse 9, there is the reference to the inner man, the heart and the glory, which is glad and rejoices; that's the first half of the verse. Then there is the reference to the body at the end of verse 9, the second phrase: “My flesh also will dwell securely.” Then you will notice in verse 10, the first phrase has to do with the inner man, the spirit, the soul: “You will not abandon my soul to Sheol.” And then the second half of verse 10 has to do with the body: “Nor will You allow Your Holy One to undergo decay.” So in verse 9, it is describing there his own personal hope and resurrection. He distinguishes between the soul and the body. Then in verse 10, he is speaking here prophetically of Christ. He does the same thing again, distinguishing between the soul and the body. Verse 10 applies and describes specifically in a way that it could never describe David. It describes the Lord Jesus Christ.
The word Sheol here is the word that simply referred to the place of the dead. It could be translated as “grave.” It's the place of departed spirits. And here's what's interesting about Old Testament revelation regarding the afterlife. It is not as clear or specific or as detailed as New Testament revelation regarding the afterlife. In the Old Testament, they simply spoke of the realm of the dead, Sheol, the place where the dead went. And they didn't really distinguish between the righteous and the unrighteous in terms of going to the place of the dead. But Sheol didn't refer to Heaven or to Hell or to some holding tank in between. It simply was the place where the dead are. And he's using it generically here. The New Testament is much more clear, a lot more detail in New Testament revelation. And that's not to say that the Old Testament and the New Testament contradict each other, but it is to say that the Old Testament just did not provide as much detail about that as the New Testament does.
So David says, “You will not abandon my inner man to the grave or to Sheol.” In other words, You will not leave my spirit in the place where spirits go. But instead he has confidence that he would be resurrected and dwell securely.
And then he says at the end of verse 10 something that can only apply to the Lord Jesus Christ: “You will not allow Your Holy One to undergo decay.” Now David's reasoning here is very simple. God is not going to abandon me to death after He has sustained me and kept me and graced me in life, after He has loved me, after He has cared for me, after He has provided for me. With Him at my right hand, when I need it most, God is not going to abandon me. He has made Yahweh his guard at his right hand. He has made Him his trust and his refuge. And here is David's point: just when I need Yahweh the most, when it matters most, at the time of my greatest need—that is, in death—He will not abandon me. He will not give me up then.
And friends, if you and I cannot have that kind of confidence in God, then we cannot have any confidence in God. What good is it if He watches over us and keeps us from a thousand dangers in this life only to abandon us when it matters the most in death? What good is that? What good is it if God should solve for you a thousand problems in this life only to abandon you to the one problem that is your biggest problem, namely sin and death? He will not abandon my soul to Sheol.
If Yahweh were to forsake His people in death and leave us in the grave, then everything that He might do for us here is just like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. Makes it nicer, makes it more convenient, pretties it up a little bit, rearranges things, makes it look good, maybe a little easier for people to run and scurry about on. But ultimately, if your ship is going down, it doesn't matter what He does for you during just the seventy or eighty years here. We need a God who will not abandon us to Sheol, but one who shall guarantee that our flesh will dwell securely.
In verse 10, the second phrase can only describe the Lord Jesus Christ. The word for decay here is a word that means pit or grave. Sometimes it was used to describe destruction or corruption or even the state of death. The word pit means something into which a body would be placed or cast. And what David means here by pit is not just simply a hole in the ground, but he is describing here with that one word the state of death and all that it entails. Somebody would die and the spirit, soul, would go to Sheol, the place of spirits, and the body would be put into the pit, into the grave or the hole, and there it would decompose and decay and eventually deteriorate into nothingness. And that is what he is describing, not just the place in which the body was put but the state to which the body would go. He will not abandon me to Sheol and He will not allow me to undergo decay.
Now verse 10 is where we get the sense that David can't be describing David because he did die, he was buried, and his body was there, and his tomb was with the apostles even on the day of Pentecost, and so he did decay because David did not rise from the dead. And so David is describing something here that is true of him in a sense. And back when we started Psalm 16 I told you it's a messianic psalm and there are times when you're reading the psalm and you think, yeah, it sounds like David, but it doesn't quite sound like David. It sounds like somebody that David has in mind who's a lot like David but not entirely like David. You remember that? This is that phrase.
There's a sense in which we could say, yeah, this kind of sounds like David. I mean if I wanted to spiritualize the prophecy, here's how I would do it. He's not going to abandon me entirely and finally in the end to decay. I mean, yes, I might decay, but I won't remain there, I won't be abandoned to that, I won't be finally left over to that. Ultimately, even from that state of decay, I will rise again, and my flesh will dwell securely. Now, if we wanted to kind of be spiritualizing the passage of Scripture, we could read the prophecy and we could say, OK, there's a sense in which I can kind of see how David's experience and reality would sort of fit into that. He did ultimately suffer decay, but he won't be finally given over to decay. Got it?
But then when one who comes from David's line dies on a cross in fulfillment of Psalm 22 and Isaiah 53, one who claimed to be the resurrection and the life, one who promised that He would raise His own body from the dead, one who claimed that the Father had given to Him authority to give life to whomever He wishes, and one who said, “I have authority to lay down My life and to take it up again,” when that Son of David rises three days after He is crucified, then you go, “I get it now.” Psalm 16:10 is not describing David. It's describing the one who literally never suffered decay. That makes sense.
So David is describing his experience, kind of, but he's really describing the Lord Jesus Christ. And that's why Peter on the day of Pentecost could say, “David said of Him, ‘You will not abandon my soul to Sheol, nor allow Your Holy One to undergo decay,’” because the Holy One spoken of in verse 10 is not David. The Holy One spoken of in verse 10 is David's greater Son.
Now, did David know that that's what he was writing about? Was David aware of that? I don't care. I don't. He didn't need to be aware that that's what he was writing about. It's irrelevant. First Peter 1 says the prophets wrote about things that they did not understand themselves. There were times when the prophets would write out the prophecy, write out what was written, and then probably go back sometime later and read it and say, “Yeah, I don't know that—I mean, I don't know. That's not—I mean, that's what I wrote, but that really . . . I just put it in the book, and let's just call it a day. I'm not going to edit that.” They longed to look into these things. They longed to know what it was that they were writing about. So did David know that he was speaking here of the Messiah or did he think that he was accurately describing his own expectation? It could have been either one or both of those.
Paul makes the same argument, by the way, in Acts 13. Peter leveraged Psalm 16 in Acts 2 in his first sermon of the day of Pentecost. The apostle Paul, in his first recorded sermon in Acts 13 in Pisidian Antioch in a synagogue filled with Jews, makes the exact same argument. In verses 34–35 of chapter 13 Paul says, “As for the fact that He raised Him up from the dead, no longer to return to decay, He has spoken in this way: ‘I will give you the holy and sure blessings of David.’ Therefore He also says in another Psalm, ‘You will not allow Your Holy One to undergo decay.’” Now listen to what Paul says. “For David, after he had served the purpose of God in his own generation, fell asleep [he died], and was laid among his fathers and underwent decay; but He whom God raised did not undergo decay” (vv. 36–37). So the apostle Paul takes this psalm and applies it, interprets it, literally. With the resurrection of Christ, you and I see that the Spirit of God in this passage in Psalm 16 was not speaking of David, He was speaking of David's greater Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, who Himself did not suffer decay.
Now, just as a side note, because I have a little bit of extra time, just as a side note, the way that the apostles interpreted Old Testament prophecy in Acts 2 and Acts 13 tells us how we should interpret Old Testament prophecy—literally. Their entire defense of the resurrection of Jesus Christ hinged upon the most literal possible interpretation of that prophecy. They did not spiritualize it, they did not come up with a symbol, they did not make up a metaphor, and they didn't say, “Ah, these things are going to be fulfilled in some way in a spiritual sense later on to another group of people.” No, no, no, no, no. That word decay they took in the most literal way possible, and they said, “This has to speak of Christ.” No spiritual symbolism at all in the prophecy or the interpretation of the apostles.
Three thousand years ago, God promised that His Holy One would never undergo decay, and He has delivered on that promise. Two thousand years ago, Jesus Christ promised this:
37 All that the Father gives Me will come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will certainly not cast out.
38 For I have come down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me.
39 This is the will of Him who sent Me, that of all that He has given Me I lose nothing, but raise it up on the last day.
40 For this is the will of My Father, that everyone who beholds the Son and believes in Him will have eternal life, and I Myself will raise him up on the last day. (John 6:37–40 NASB)
That is His promise. Believer, if you are trusting in Jesus Christ for salvation, the Lord Jesus Christ, the one who Himself did not suffer decay, has promised that He will raise you on the last day. He has said, “This is the will of the Father who sent Me, that of all that He has given to Me, they will come to Me, I will give them eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day, and I will not lose one.” That is His promise. Not one of you who trusts in Christ will be lost on the final day. Not one who trusts in Christ will be abandoned to Sheol or left to decay in the grave. Every last one of us who has trusted in Christ will himself be raised personally, privately, and individually in resurrection on that last day. He has promised it. And if He has fulfilled His word concerning David's greater Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, then Yahweh, our God, will fulfill His word concerning you, and that is that He will raise you up on the last day as well.
1 Corinthians 6:14: “Now God has not only raised the Lord, but will also raise us up through His power.”
Philippians 3:20–21 says, “Our citizenship is in heaven, from which also we eagerly await for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ; who will transform the body of our humble state into conformity with the body of His glory, by the exertion of the power that He has to subject all things to Himself.”
The Lord Jesus Christ did not undergo decay at all, and He was raised on the third day according to the promise of Psalm 16:10, and He will ultimately deliver all of us from decay by raising us out of the grave on that final day.
The believer's resurrection hope is personal, it was prophesied, and third, it is pleasurable. 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.” Now there is a sense in which this can describe the eternal life that we have by God bringing us to repentance and faith. God makes known to us the path of life. He does. It is God Himself who brings us to eternal life and makes us to know what it is to walk in life and to experience that eternal life. But I ask you in view of the rest of verse 11 as well as 9–10, this resurrection hope, what do you think that David is describing in verse 11? He is describing God making known to him life in the resurrection on the final day. It is God who does make us to know the path of life in this world; that's right. He brings us into eternal and everlasting life by regenerating us and making us to live spiritually. But ultimately on that final day, God Himself will make known to us the path of life. You will live again and you will live forever. That's verse 11. You will live and you will live forever.
Verse 11, read from the perspective of being the Lord Jesus Christ—listen to what Christ is saying. “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.” This verse Peter quotes in Acts 2, saying David was speaking of Christ in verse 11. He would know the path of life. He would know fullness of joy at the Father's right hand. He would know pleasures forevermore. Christ would.
I think that this is what the author of Hebrews was alluding to in Hebrews 12:2 when he tells us that we are to fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, [listen] who for the joy set before Him endured the cross and despised the shame and sat down where? At the right hand of the throne of God. For the joy set before Him. In other words, Psalm 16:11 is the confession of the Lord Jesus Christ going to the cross. “You will make known to Me the path of life; in Your presence is fullness of joy forever and pleasures at Your right hand.” That's the confession of the Lord Jesus Christ.
And if it is true of Him, it is certainly true of us. Our Lord Jesus can say that He has joy at His Father's right hand, that His joy is an eternal joy, that His joy is an infinite and full joy. For Yahweh has made known to Him, in resurrection, the path of life and seated Him at the Father's right hand where there is fullness of joy forever. This was David's confidence. David's confidence was in a God whose presence would be known to him and whose presence he would enter into to enjoy in that presence life and joy and pleasure forevermore. And not just joy but fullness of joy. Look at verse 11—fullness of joy.
You have never in this world known fullness of joy. Not once. Think back, if you will, upon your most joy-filled moments. It wasn't the fullness of joy because there is always room for more joy. It could have been happier. Think back to whatever it was—birth of a child, birth of a grandchild, death of a neighbor, whatever it was that just filled your heart with joy and you thought, I am just overflowing at this moment. I can't imagine being any more full of joy than I enjoy right here in this moment. Go back to that moment, whatever it is—your marriage—and then imagine that somebody steps in and says, “Here's a check for $10 million. It's all yours.” You'd have a little more capacity for a little bit more joy, wouldn't you? You think, Then I would experience the fullness of joy. I do have room for just a little bit more joy.
In this world, every joy that we experience is mixed in some measure with a little bit of sorrow. Sorrow taints it, sin taints it, our limitations taint it. It's temporary. We know that the wedding day comes to an end. We know that the graduation comes to an end. We know that the marriage will come to an end ultimately by the death of one of the spouses. We know that all of these joys will ultimately come to an end, and that sort of hangs over all of it forever. So we never in this world know what it is to experience the fullness of infinite joy, but at the right hand of God, there is fullness of joy forever and pleasures in His right hand forever.
In God's right hand is where—I mean, that symbol of a right hand, as mentioned last week, it's the position of power and authority. It is the place of honor. So here, the right hand is used. David says, “I put Yahweh at my right hand,” and then he sees himself as ultimately being at Yahweh's right hand. The right hand here, this symbol, is one of God Himself holding forth His hand, which is powerful and authoritative and abundant enough to dispense pleasures. And so at His right hand, we walk up and we take from Him, by His grace, a pleasure. And we turn around to enjoy it and we come back and there's another pleasure at His right hand. A never-ending stream of abundant joy, abundant delight, and abundant pleasures forever.
Do you think that God has spent His very best that He has to give to us? Do you think that He has spent it in this world? Do you think that He just got done with creation, got done with planning this world, and thought, “I've got nothing more to give. I have exhausted My creative mind of all potential pleasures and joys and delights. I've given everything I can to these people. I've got nothing left, nothing”? Look back at the storehouse of Heaven—empty, shelves empty. No more pleasures, no more joys, no more delights. He puts it all into this world only to have it spoiled by sin. You think God would do that? I don't think He would.
Do you think that God is opposed to pleasure? No, He created it. He created the pleasures we get to enjoy, and He created us to enjoy pleasures. Pleasure is not a sinful thing. The wrong use of pleasure outside of the right parameters of pleasure, or the abuse of pleasure, or the idolatry of pleasure, those are all bad things, but pleasure itself is a beautiful thing. God created us for pleasure, and He created pleasures for us. He could have created all food that tastes like broccoli, could have made it all taste like broccoli. But He didn't do that. Hundreds and thousands of flavors, and then you combine them and you get hundreds upon thousands of other flavors. And then He could have done that, created all of that variety and joy of food, and then He could have given us tongues without taste buds, so that we couldn't taste it. But guess what He did. He created us as creatures that can eat, with taste buds, that can enjoy good food, and He created all the abundance of those pleasures so that we could enjoy it.
And God delights in those pleasures when we enjoy them rightly and properly. He created the pleasures. He delights to give His creatures joys and delights and pleasures. Good food, good drink, good times, celebrations, laughter, relaxation, good company, friends, family, companions, entertainment, exploration, discoveries, excitements, anticipation, thrills, industry, hobbies, creation, rest, enjoyable work, recreation, and parties—every one of these things is given from God's right hand today, and every last one of them is a token of blessings to come forevermore. They're just tastes, they're hints. Like the smell of food is to a meal so are the pleasures we enjoy in this life to the pleasures which are to come. We have not even begun to see the beginning of what God has in store for those who love Him and trust Him.
Do you think that the best food you will ever eat is to be found in this world, tainted with sin, with your fallen taste buds? No. Do you think the best drinks you've ever had are limited to this world? No. Do you think that the best celebrations are the ones you have here? No. How about this world? Do you think that it has the best beaches, the best sunsets, the best parties, discoveries, vacations, trips, worship services, and friends that you will ever know or experience? It doesn't. Every last one of those here is a token of what is to come and points to the pleasure that He has at His right hand forevermore.
There is an idea of Heaven, and I've heard it said by well-meaning but mistaken people, that what we have to look forward to is sort of this eternal moment of now, where we stand in the presence of God unaware of anything around us except His presence and His brightness and we just stare into light forever and ever and ever. That's all we do. Like a paused VHS tape, the scene's just there on the screen, twitching like this, never really going anywhere, and you're kind of wondering what's next, and it's just this forever. That is one of the most insidious, blasphemous ideas against the nature and the goodness of God that the devil ever could have conjured up out of the pit of Hell itself because that is not what Heaven is like.
I was talking to somebody just about a week and a half ago who was telling me about his unbelieving child. And I asked him, you know, have you shared the gospel with her? Yes, he has. He said, “She asked me what Heaven is going to be like, and I told her, and she said, ‘If that's what Heaven is going to be like, I don't want to go there.’” I didn't have time to say it then, but I'll say it to you now—I don't think he told her what Heaven is going to be like. I don't think he told her. I think he probably gave her the paused VHS version of Heaven because that's the blasphemous lie that we've been told.
Our resurrected state will be life, joy, and pleasure, all of them endless, without any possibility that it will ever be despoiled from us, ever be taken from us, or ever be diminished. And our God, who did not withhold His own Son, will with Him freely give us all things. This is the resurrection hope of those who have made Yahweh their trust and their refuge, that the second Person of the Trinity left the glories and the riches of Heaven to come to this earth and take upon Himself a human nature and a human body and then to live a perfect life and then to die in the place of unworthy sinners who deserved His wrath. We deserve the wrath that Jesus Christ suffered that we have just sung about this morning. We deserve that wrath for our lying, for our stealing, for our blasphemy, our pride, our lust, our adultery of heart, our murder of the heart, our greed, our selfishness, dishonoring our parents, our idolatry, our rebellion. We deserve the wrath for that. And if God were to give to us guilty sinners what we deserve, He would cast us into everlasting Hell because that is what we deserve. Justice cries for our blood. Justice demands that.
But God in the overflowing of His mercy and grace, God in the abundant riches of His lovingkindness, found a way to satisfy the demands of justice without compromising it while also expressing love and grace and showing mercy. How can justice and mercy both be expressed? They were expressed at the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ when He, who was the second Person of the Trinity, God in human flesh, stepped into this world and then lived a perfect life, then died on that cross to bear the wrath that you and I deserve, and then, praise be to God, He rose again from the grave, securing your victory over sin and over death because He is victorious over sin and over death. And He presented Himself alive to witnesses with many convincing proofs over the course of forty days. Then He was taken to Heaven and ascended to the Father's right hand, where He sits right now in the fullness of joy, delighting in the Father's goodness and looking forward to that day when we are with Him at His right hand and He gets to pour out on us, by His abundant lovingkindness and grace, pleasures forevermore and joy and delights for all of eternity.
He solved our sin problem. He solved our death problem. He died on the cross and bore the wrath of God so you don't have to, and then He rose from the grave so that you will too. That is His promise. And we live right now between His resurrection and our resurrection. We live right now between His first coming and His return to this earth. And when He comes again, He is not going to come to seek and to save, but He is going to come to execute the fierce wrath of God against sin.
So today is the day of salvation. Today is the day of grace. Receive mercy and be forgiven today by repentance and faith, for God commands you this day to repent of your sin and to trust the Savior so that you may have eternal life, or you will stand before this One who has promised to be your judge on the final day. Paul said in Acts 17, “Therefore having overlooked the times of ignorance, God is now declaring to men that all people everywhere should repent, because He has fixed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness . . . , having furnished proof to all men by raising Him from the dead” (vv. 30–31). The resurrection of Christ is the sure indication that God will judge the world in righteousness and destroy impenitent sinners, but the resurrection of Christ is also the sure and infallible proof that God will be merciful to guilty sinners if they will turn to Him in repentance and faith.
So unbeliever, if you are sitting here today and you have never trusted Christ for salvation, I command you on the authority of Scripture, be reconciled to God through the death of His Son or stand before Him in judgment. Come to Him in repentance and faith and receive the forgiveness of sins. To you, believer, let your heart be filled with joy at the realization that you will soon be ushered into His presence at His right hand where there is fullness of joy forever and eternal pleasures without end.