The Bible Study Hour

Guest (Male): Today on the Bible Study Hour, we'll take a closer look at Psalm 16, where David doesn't just trust God to provide for his daily needs or to protect him from his enemies. He's counting on God for future restoration. What do you suppose that picture of restoration looks like for David, and what does it mean for us?

Welcome to the Bible Study Hour, a radio and internet broadcast with Dr. James Boice, preparing you to think and act biblically. David acknowledges in Psalm 16 that apart from God, he has nothing. He knows that God is his provider, protector, and sustainer. In addition to that, he goes on to tell God that he knows God will bring him restoration. Let's listen together to find out exactly what David was talking about. If you have your Bible, turn to Psalm 16.

Dr. James Boice: We're studying the 16th Psalm together, particularly for the prophecy it contains of the resurrection. But I think it would be appropriate to begin not with Psalm 16, but with Luke 24, and it's the story of the Emmaus disciples. Sometime in the late morning of that first Easter day, these two disciples were making their way to their hometown of Emmaus from Jerusalem, where they had been over the weekend.

One of them was called Cleopas; his name appears in the story. The other is unnamed. But in the 19th chapter of John, there's reference to a man named Clopas—it's a very similar name—and that man's wife's name is given there. Her name is Mary. I've always thought it highly unlikely that there would be two disciples of Jesus Christ in Jerusalem at that time with names similar but different, especially when it's such an unusual name.

And if that's not the case and rather the two are the same person, then this Cleopas who was making his way home to Emmaus on Easter Sunday was the same Cleopas of John 19, and the other person was undoubtedly his wife. It was a couple, Cleopas and Mary, going home. They had been there for the Passover. It was a very important Passover because it's one in which Jesus of Nazareth had come marching into the city in what they hoped was to be a great victory celebration. They had hoped he was going to take the throne of David, but he hadn't.

Instead of that, he had been arrested and tried and killed and buried. They were there on Easter Sunday morning when the women went to the tomb. This Mary might have been one of them because there were a number of women—they're not all named—and if so, she heard the words of the angels. The angels said, "He's not here; he's risen as he said. Go quickly and tell his disciples that he's risen from the dead."

But that didn't carry any weight with them. They didn't know about angels; I guess they're important in fairy tales, but when they're telling you that somebody who was dead is alive, well, nobody in their right mind would believe them. At any rate, Cleopas and Mary didn't. They had planned to go home. They were people who have an agenda and stick to it. And so, even though they had heard the rumors, and even though it was obviously true that the tomb was empty, well, it just didn't make any difference to them. It was all over, and they wanted to go back home.

While they were on the way, Jesus appeared to them. He asked them what was wrong. They began to explain, and then we're told how he responded to them. He said, "Oh, foolish ones and slow of heart to believe. Wasn't it necessary that Christ suffer all these things and then enter into his glory?" And then there's that great text. It says, "Beginning with Moses and the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the Scriptures the things that pertain to himself."

Now, that was a great sermon. I appreciate great sermons. There aren't too many of them, and I wish I had been there to hear that one, don't you? Here is the Lord himself preaching an Easter sermon, expounding out of the Old Testament all the texts that had to do with what happened there in Jerusalem that week—how he had to come into the city, be rejected, crucified, dead, buried, and then risen. Yes, and I'm sure even coming again, because he was beginning to teach them about that.

Don't you wonder what texts he used? Some time ago, I did a sermon in which I speculated on that. I think it's not entirely impossible to track down what texts he might have used because the early Christian preaching reflects it. When Peter stood up on Pentecost and began to preach out of the Old Testament, I'm sure that wasn't just sudden inspiration on Peter's part. Jesus had been expounding the Old Testament; he'd been teaching the texts to them.

So when Peter, now who had been listening from the resurrected Lord, stood up to preach, he naturally turned to the texts that Jesus had taught him. So you go to those texts and the sermons of Paul in Acts, and you begin to get an idea of the texts that Jesus might have chosen. Psalm 110:1 was one of them: "The Lord said unto my Lord, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool." That is the Old Testament verse most quoted in the New Testament. It's quoted literally scores of times, obviously because Jesus taught them the meaning of the text.

There are many other texts like that. You read the book of Hebrews, and I believe in the first chapter alone, there are seven Old Testament texts that are interpreted in terms of the ministry of Jesus Christ. In the next chapter, there are four more, and so on throughout the book. I don't know what all those texts that Jesus expounded on that first Easter Sunday may have been, but I am sure that one of them was from Psalm 16:10.

The reason I'm sure of that is that at Pentecost, this was one of the Old Testament texts that Peter quoted. And in the first real sermon of the Apostle Paul recorded in Acts—in Acts 13, a sermon that he preached in the synagogue of Antioch—the Apostle Paul quoted the text as well. This was part of the arsenal, the Old Testament arsenal of the early Christians. It's the text that said, "You will not abandon me to the grave, nor will you let your holy one see decay."

Why is this such a clear prophecy of the resurrection of Jesus Christ? And why did Jesus use it in that way, as we assume he did, and why did the early preachers preach upon it as a prophecy of Jesus' resurrection? It's because of the second part of the verse. The first part is an significant prophecy, but it's not all that unusual. You see, when David said—he's the writer of the Psalm—"You will not abandon me to the grave," well, that is a statement of faith of a rather high order, but it's not unparalleled in the Old Testament.

Job, for example, in that great book, had a similar testimony. He said that at the latter day, he was going to stand upon the earth, and he was going to see his redeemer with his own eyes. "My own eyes," he said, "and not another." So there you had a great faith in the resurrection. If it were only for the first half of this verse, we would say of David, "Well, yes, he certainly had a faith in his own resurrection that was comparable to that of the great patriarch Job." But that would be all; it wouldn't necessarily point to Jesus Christ.

It's not for the first half of the verse that this is so significant; it's for what is said in part two. The second part says, "nor will you let your holy one see decay." That means the body would not decompose. Now you see, our bodies do decompose when we die, even if we're waiting for the resurrection. And David died, and his body decayed. But what he says in this text is, "You are not going to let your holy one see decay." Who is the holy one? Not David certainly, because he did decay, and it's an inappropriate term for him anyway—"holy one."

So you see, this is an anticipation of the coming of Jesus Christ. And it's for this reason that the text is picked up and used so effectively in the New Testament. Peter, as I said, used it, and he made quite clear what he meant. "Brothers," he said, "I can tell you confidently that the patriarch David died and was buried, and his tomb is here to this day. But he was a prophet, and he knew that God had promised him on oath that he would place one of his descendants on his throne."

"So seeing what was ahead, he spoke of the resurrection of the Christ—that he was not abandoned to the grave, nor did his body see decay." And then the Apostle Paul in Acts 13, in that sermon I mentioned a moment ago, he was even clearer. He said, "For when David had served God's purpose in his own generation, he fell asleep and was buried with his fathers, and his body decayed. But the one whom God raised from the dead did not decay." And so Paul takes it that way as well.

Now the psalm is, nevertheless, a Psalm of David, and it should really be understood in that sense. At least there's a great deal in it for us as a Psalm of David, even apart from this prophecy of the resurrection. One of the great commentators on the Psalms, H.C. Leupold, calls this "a Psalm in which the Psalmist declares that God is his portion in life and his deliverer in death." That's exactly what the Psalm is about.

The prophecy of the resurrection comes in the latter part of that, but preceding it is all of this great testimony of David concerning his faith in God upon which his faith in the resurrection is founded. So we need to look at it that way. Let me suggest that there are four parts. And if you outline it, you may want to make some marking in your Bible. The first two verses are part one. They portray the Psalmist's relationship to God.

Verses 3 and 4 are a second part. They describe the result of that first relationship, and it has to do with the Psalmist's relationship to other people. Because he has a certain relationship to God, there's an effect on those other people with whom he has contact. The third part of the Psalm is verses 5 through 8, and it describes the Psalmist's present blessings. And then at the very end, verses 9 through 11, we have the Psalmist's future hope.

Now let's just look at each of those and see what they have to say for us. First of all, the Psalmist's relationship to God. It's described very vividly by the words that he uses for God. "Keep me safe, O God"—that's the first word. It's the word El in Hebrew. It's the most common name for God. Even the pagan gods could use that word to describe their gods. And what it really refers to, the unique quality of the word, is that it refers to God in his power or his might. It really means the strong God or the mighty God. It's very significant in that context that having said, "Keep me safe, O God," he says, "in you I take refuge." It's in the strong one that David takes refuge.

Verse 2 introduces another word: "I said to the Lord." That's the word Jehovah. You can generally tell that in Bibles because they use large and small capitals instead of large and small letters, and that's the word Jehovah. That's the covenant name for God. It's the name that God revealed to Moses at the burning bush. You recall when God was sending Moses back into Egypt to say to Pharaoh, "Let my people go," he said, "Yes, but if I go and say that, if I say the God of your fathers has sent me to you, and they say to me, 'What is his name?' what am I going to tell them?"

And God gave him that great revelation. He says, "I AM." "This is what you're to say to them: 'I AM' hath sent me to you." That is the eternal, existing, self-sufficient God—the God who now was entering into a special relationship with his people, covenanting to bring them out of Egypt into their own land. That's the word that's used here. The second time that word Lord occurs in that verse—"You are my Lord"—it's not Jehovah. That's the first, but it's rather a more common word, Adonai. It means "Lord" in the same sense you could use "lord" in referring to a human being, a master, somebody who's over you. A king would be your lord. Somebody who has authority over you in another sense would be your lord.

Now notice how that works. David is saying, "I said to Jehovah, 'You are my Lord.'" I said to Jehovah, the great God of Israel, the personal name of the one who has covenanted with Israel to be their savior, "You are my Adonai or master." Does that sound familiar? It's virtually the same thing we say when we confess that Jesus Christ is Lord and Savior.

The word "savior" refers to the Jehovah aspect. It is as Jehovah that God is the savior. That's what Jonah said in the second chapter of that book when he was in the belly of the whale. He said, "Salvation is of the Lord." It's Jehovah who's the savior. So when we call Jesus "savior," it's in that respect that we refer to him. And then when we call him "Lord," that's the word Adonai. He is not only our saving God, he is our master as well. And the two always go together.

If God is your savior, he is your Lord. You can't have one without the other, and if you're not following him as Lord, you don't know him as savior. All of this is here at the beginning, and it is this God, says David, in whom I'm going to take refuge. Notice the consequence of it. He says, "Apart from you, I have no good thing." In other words, he knew that God was the source of all good. And why was that? It's because he knew God.

People who don't know God don't know that. They say, "God? Well, he's the one that wants to keep you from having fun. He's up there in heaven looking down to see if you enjoy yourself, and if ever he does catch you enjoying yourself, he says, 'Now you cut that out.'" That's the way people who don't know God think of God. But people who know God, who found God to be what these words convey, say, "God is the source of all good. Apart from him, I have no good at all."

What James says in the New Testament—he uses other words, but it's exactly the same theology—he says, "Every good gift and every perfect gift comes down from heaven from the Father of lights in whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning." God gives, and he's not reluctant in his giving, and he doesn't change his mind. He is an eternal source of eternal good, and to know him is to know that. It's also to be satisfied with that, as we're going to see in a moment.

The second part of this has to do with the relationships David has with other people, and it follows upon his relationships with God. He said, "If I know God as the way I've just described him, well, it's going to affect the way I relate to the wicked on the one hand and to those who know God on the other." Those who know God are called the "saints." He said they are the glorious ones in whom is all my delight. I'm glad to be with them.

On the other hand, he says there are the wicked—those who run after other gods. He said, "I don't want to have anything to do with them. I want to keep away from their company." That's an interesting test, you know, of whether you're really close to God or not. Very simple test—doesn't require heavy theological language to understand it. It's as simple as this: Do you like God's people? Do you enjoy being with them? Do you like coming to church?

Or do you find Christian people difficult to be with? You say, "I can't stand those hypocrites. Why, what I want to be is out having fun on a Sunday night. I want to be in one of the bars or one of the clubs or something like that." Is that where your heart is? I don't mean to say that a Christian can never be in that kind of company. I certainly don't mean to say that Christians shouldn't be in the world. We are to be in the world though not of it. We have to be there if we're going to witness to those who need to hear the gospel. But it's one thing to be there for that purpose, and another thing to be hankering after it.

And that's what David says here. He says, "I don't want to get cozy with the wicked. And what I really want to be is with the saints because it's in them I take my delight." They love the Lord, I love the Lord, and if they love the Lord and I love the Lord, we love the same thing. We're going to get along very well together. But when I'm with people who don't love the Lord, who hate the Lord, who blaspheme the name of the Lord, then I'm uncomfortable, and I don't want to be there. And the question is: Are you uncomfortable in that kind of company? It's one way to test where you are. If you find yourself able easily to stand with Christ's enemies and warm your hands at their fire the way Peter did in the courtyard of the high priest, it's because you're not very close to Jesus, and you better be careful because it won't be long before you deny him.

The third part of it has to do with David's present blessings, and there are many. I suppose if he were writing a longer Psalm, one with more verses, he would have gone on at greater length, but many of them are here. Look at them: "Lord, you have assigned me my portion and my cup." Now that word "portion" can mean a number of things. It can have to do with his inheritance in the land, the portion of the land given to him, or it can have to do with provisions—what we would call a daily ration.

Since it's linked with the word "cup" in the verse and since the matter of inheritance comes in the next verse, it's probably right to take it in that second sense. What he's talking about here is God's provision of his needs—daily ration of food. It's what we pray for, mention in the Lord's Prayer, when we say, "Give us this day our daily bread." That's exactly the same thing. And here is David testifying to the fact that God has done that for him. He has always provided for him day by day, in every aspect of life, at every period of life, in all kinds of circumstances. God has provided for him what he really needed. Apostle Paul says that as well. He's learned in whatever state he is to be content because he knows that God supplies his needs, and he says, "I'm confident that God will supply your needs as well."

Second thing he mentions is being secure: "You've made my lot secure." Again, that word "lot" can be used in several ways. It really means "as the lot is cast." That's the way the land was distributed, so it could refer to the inheritance that comes later. But since it's in a separate verse and since the inheritance is mentioned later, you probably should take it in another way, just as you do the first part. And what he probably means is my circumstances in life, that is, what you've measured out for me: where I am, who I am, kind of job I have, where I live—all of the little details that go into making up our lives. He says, "You've made my lot secure, and I'm content for where you've put me."

He makes that even more explicit in verse 6: "The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places, and I have a delightful inheritance." What impresses me most there is how content he is with what God's given. You might say, "Oh yeah, but that was David. He was the king; he had a lot." Oh, listen. If you think that way, you don't understand the heart of men and women. It's not how much you have that makes you content. It's whether you're content that enables you to use properly what you have.

I find generally that the more people have, the less content they are, and we live in a generation that is characterized by a lack of contentment. Some time ago, somebody gave me a book; said I really should read it. It's by a man named Mike Bellah—he's a pastor in Texas—and it's about baby boom believers. Ever heard of baby boom believers? It's the baby boomers who are yuppies, who are also Christians. It has a little subtitle. The subtitle is "Why We Think We Need It All and How to Survive When We Don't Get It."

If you're laughing, you ought to read it. He talks about our lack of contentment in our time being a mark especially of what he calls the baby boomer generation or the yuppie generation, and he says this: "Baby boomers are not very content because our expectations are so much higher than the reality. We tend to be discontented, restless, and bored." You're nodding. That is exactly what it's like. We know people about us all the time that are like that, and often we're like that ourselves—discontented, restless, and bored.

What's the cure for that? More things? Oh, people are trying that. We have more things in our generation than any other time. The cure for restlessness and discontentment is not more things, but God. You know what Augustine said: "You've made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in thee." Somebody else has said God has put a God-sized vacuum in our soul, and nothing but God can fill it. You can pour things into that God-sized vacuum throughout an entire life of acquisition, and when you're done, you're still going to be restless and unhappy because what you need is God.

David had found God. He started that way: "O God, I take refuge in you. I say to the Lord, 'You are my Lord; apart from you I have no good thing.'" And since he had God, he had all good things, and when he comes to the end, all he can say is how happy he is, how God has been good to him, and how content he is at God's goodness. Christians would be far more effective in their witness if they were really happy in their faith, really content in God. You and I need to get to know him better so we can do that.

Well, we come to the fourth part, and here's the part that deals with the resurrection. David is looking ahead now to the future, beginning to reflect on his past experience and what it has to say for death and what lies beyond death. And he says, "You will not abandon me to the grave. You will not let your holy one see decay." A worthwhile question, I suppose, is whether in a Psalm in which he's writing out of his own experience and presumably is writing about himself and his own expectations, whether in a Psalm like that, David could really actually be looking ahead to the Messiah.

He does seem to say that—"You won't let your holy one see decay"—but after all, that is a little thing stuck in there in the middle of a Psalm that seems to do primarily with him. I suppose if I had to vote, I would say yes, he was thinking of the Messiah. That's why he uses the term, but it doesn't necessarily have to be that way. It's true that Peter in his sermon at Pentecost called David a prophet. But in his first letter, written later in his life, he said, "You know, the Old Testament prophets didn't understand all the things that they wrote, but rather they asked the Holy Spirit to help them search it out."

So God actually led them to write things they didn't understand, and then having written it down, they did the same thing we do when we come to the Bible. They prayed and said, "Holy Spirit, help me understand what I've written." That's what Peter says. So it doesn't necessarily follow that although David wrote this and it was about Jesus, he necessarily understood it at the time. I think he did, but let me say this: Even if he didn't, it's even more remarkable.

I said early on it's remarkable that he could give this kind of a prophecy, going beyond anything that Job or any of the other Old Testament saints ever said. But you see, even if he wasn't thinking of Jesus, it's more remarkable than that. Because here is a man whose experience did not include the experience of the resurrection. For us to say that, to look back to the resurrection of Jesus Christ and say, "Well, because he rose, we will rise as well," what kind of faith is that? That's simply observing the evidence and making a conclusion from it.

But here is David, writing before the resurrection, and he says, "You're not going to leave me in the grave. You're not going to allow my body ultimately," if he's not thinking about Jesus, "to see decay." One of the commentators writes about that very well. He says, "The boldness of it all almost leaves the reader breathless. How can a man see all men dying and note that all the children of men before his time have died without exception, and still say God cannot let that happen to me?" It appears like being carried away with the rhapsody of bold assertion. And yet, still in the last analysis, must not faith draw the conclusion that if you hold to God, God will take care of you perfectly?

Where did David get that kind of faith? It was the logic of faith. That's how he came to that conclusion. You see, he began with his knowledge of God—who God is, what he is like. He added to that his experience of God—God had taken care of him in this life—and then he concluded obviously, rationally: If that's the kind of God God is, and if he showed that kind of favor on me here, obviously he's going to take care of me beyond the grave. God's not going to change his mind. God didn't send Jesus Christ to die for you in order that someday, the last time, you're going to fall away and be lost.

God is faithful in his promises. And so David, even though he didn't have our knowledge and had no experience of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, which is yet to come, said, "God, if he's going to be faithful to me and consistent with what he has done in my life, is going to have to raise me from the dead." Great faith, you see. Let me say in closing that great as the faith may be, it's not the faith that saved him or made it true.

The only value of faith was that it was fixed upon the one who actually did rise from the dead and in whose power you and I are going to rise as well. That means, you see, that you can have weak faith or strong faith, and in some sense it doesn't really matter as long as it's fixed on Jesus because whether your faith is weak or strong, he is the strong one. He is the God in whom you can take refuge. He is the redeemer who has died to save you. He is your master and Lord, and he's going to lead you through this life and bring you to glory whether your faith is strong or not.

And actually, it's the knowledge of that that's intended to make your faith strong. Harry Ironside has a wonderful illustration one place in his writing where he describes—I think it was a true story—four mountain climbers who were going up the face of the Matterhorn in Switzerland, up above Zermatt. There were four of them all roped together. There was a guide first, and then there were two tourists in the middle, and finally there was a second guide who brought up the rear.

As they were going over a particularly difficult place, the guide that was coming last slipped and fell. He went over the edge, and the sudden pull on the rope jerked the second tourist, off, and he went over, and then the first tourist went as well. And three men now were hanging over the edge of the cliff. But the first guide, when he felt the first pull on the rope, dug his axe into the ice and hung on fast. He stopped the fall, and then the first tourist carefully was able to regain his footing, and then the second tourist was able to regain his, and finally the last guide regained his, and the party went on up in safety.

And Ironside said as he applied it: The human race was carried away first of all by the sin of Adam, who fell over the abyss, and that man Adam pulled all other men and women that have ever been born with him. So there was a sense in which the entire human race was in deadly peril. But the Lord Jesus Christ came, and he held fast, and all who now are joined to him by saving faith are secure as well and can go on climb and eventually attain the victory. That is true. It's true not because of the strength of our faith, but because of the strength of character of the one about whom ultimately this Psalm speaks.

Let us pray. Father, bless this Psalm to our hearts. There's so much about you that we don't understand, but we certainly understand enough to know that you're faithful and you love us. You sent the Lord Jesus Christ to die for us, and you demonstrated your power when you raised him from the dead. We're joined to him. Father, help us to live like that, to go on in that kind of confidence, living as men and women who are joined to him. And grant that in what we do, what you do in us, he might have the glory now and evermore. Amen.

Guest (Male): Thank you for listening to this message from the Bible Study Hour, a listener-supported ministry of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals. The Alliance is a coalition of pastors, scholars, and churchmen who hold to the historic creeds and confessions of the Reformed faith, and who proclaim biblical doctrine in order to foster a Reformed awakening in today's church.

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