Psalm 16

David.
¹ Keep me safe, O God, for in you I take refuge.
² I said to the LORD, “You are my Lord; apart from you I have no good thing.”
³ As for the saints who are in the land, they are the glorious ones in whom is all my delight.
⁴ The sorrows of those will increase who run after other gods. I will not pour out their libations of blood or take up their names on my lips.
⁵ LORD, you have assigned me my portion and my cup; you have made my lot secure.
⁶ The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; surely I have a delightful inheritance.
⁷ I will praise the LORD, who counsels me; even at night my heart instructs me.
⁸ I have set the LORD always before me. Because he is at my right hand, I will not be shaken.
⁹ Therefore my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices; my body also will rest secure,
¹⁰ because you will not abandon me to the grave, nor will you let your Holy One see decay.
¹¹ You have made known to me the path of life; you will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand.

As I look at verse five, I cannot help but look back to the Luke 22: 42 “Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done”. Are we able to pray the same prayer as our Lord prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane? We can, once we realized that God has made our lot secure. As I travel this journey that the Lord has prepared for me, I must look to these verses as coming from the heart and life of King David. For as he wrote of Christ in his psalms, he also wrote words that can help us develop a closer walk with God.

This psalm helps us realized that God is our refuge and our delight. He does assign to us our portion in life and the cup we are to bear. Again, we are warned in this psalm not to follow after other Gods, or those who seek fellowship with those who follow other gods. God counsels us and instructs us day and night. As long as we seek him in his word, we will know he will lead us in the right path. Surely the grave is not our destiny but being in his presence with eternal pleasures.

As you read this psalm take a look at your epistemology. Ask yourself this question “What is knowledge?”. Verse eleven points out the fact that the psalmist realized that his knowledge came from God and it is God who has made known to him the path of life. This is the knowledge that the psalmist describes in Psalm One. When one start studying epistemology the first two questions that must be answered are: what knowledge is and how is knowledge acquired. To the psalmist (as we will see in Psalm nineteen) knowledge is the work of God’s hand. By studying nature knowledge is revealed to us. However, to acquire knowledge God has given to us his written Word (law, statutes, precepts, commands, and ordinances) to understand his creation.

Verse ten “because you will not abandon me to the grave, nor will you let your Holy One see decay” was used by Peter in Act 2:27 in his message on the day of Pentecost as verses that David referred to the suffering and resurrection of Christ.

In verse eleven David writes “You have made known to me the path of life”. As I grow in my faith daily, I realize that it is God who seeks after me and not me seeking God. We have a way of wanting to stray away from God, but in his loving kindness he brings us back to him. As we travel along on our journey here on earth, we like the Psalmist must realize that God is the shepherd that guides us along this path of life. As we walk along this path, we can have joy, but this joy is in knowing that God’s presence is with us. This psalm illustrates our walk on earth with God. Let each verse speak to you as it did to David. Remember each person’s walk with God is unique, however they all share the characteristics of the walk that this psalm describes.

As we study the psalms as well as the lives of the great heroes of faith both from the Bible and those that have lived from early church history to the present, we can see a common thread that they all have shared. That thread is a desert experience, a time when their faith was tested, and God did not seem to be present. It is in times like these that all believers must pray a psalm like this psalm to give us strength to get through our desert experience.