God Saves from Death, Psalm 16
God Saves from Death
Psalm 16
Introduction
I had a professor at Seminary who studied in Holland. There, he noticed a practice of the members of the Dutch church he attended. Right before the sermon, many in the congregation would pop a peppermint into their mouths. His interest being piqued, he asked the pastor what this meant. The pastor explained that the tradition went back a long time to when they used to bury the dead in the catacombs under the church. Naturally, without modern seals and during the hot and muggy summers in Holland, the smell of a freshly buried person would linger in the church for a long time. And, in order to pay attention to the preacher, the congregation would suck on a peppermint while he preached to cover over the smell. While they no longer bury under the church, the tradition sticks around.
What a picture of what happens every week. We hear the word as death clings to our nostrils, reminding us of the path we all must one day travel. And constantly we are tempted to look away, rather than to answer the great question: what shall we do about death? In Tolstoy’s classic, The Death of Ivan Ilych, Ivan’s death provokes what he calls “the complacent feeling that, ‘it is he who is dead and not I”—the unsettled gratitude of a delayed fate. And I think we would be dishonest if we did not admit that we are disturbed by these realities, whenever we are not distracting ourselves from them.
Later on in the same story, Tolstoy recounts the last days of Ivan’s life. He went through immense physical suffering that no doctor could cure. But, “as the doctor said…worse than the physical sufferings were his mental sufferings which were his chief torture. His mental sufferings were due to the fact that that night, he had looked at Gerasim’s sleepy, good-natured face with its prominent cheekbones, the question suddenly occurred to him: “What if my whole life has been wrong?” It occurred to him that what had appeared perfectly impossible before, namely that he had not spent his life as he should have done, might after all be true. It occurred to him that…his professional duties and the whole arrangement of his life and his family and all his social and official interests, might have been false. He tried to defend all those things to himself and suddenly felt the weakness of what he was defending. There was nothing to defend.”
So, Ivan asks himself a question: “If that is so, and I am leaving this life with the consciousness that I have lost all that was given me and it is impossible to rectify it—what then?” Upon a review of his life, he found that all the direction of his life “was not real at all, but a terrible and huge deception which had hidden both life and death.” All too late, Ivan realized the very thing which Solomon had said so many centuries prior: “Vanity of vanity. All is vanity.”
This very sense compels David in Psalm 16 to cry out to the Lord: “Preserve me!” We know nothing of the context, nothing of the background, nothing of the circumstances of the Psalm except what the Psalm itself says. David’s desire is to be saved from death. Verses 9-11 make that clear. “My flesh dwells secure…You will not abandon my soul to Sheol…you make known to me the paths of life.” David is reckoning with his mortality. And there is something that David knows—something which we also must know—that leads him to cry out to the one true God. Rather than being bogged down in a swamp of despondency, rather than turning himself over to the hopeless vanity of his inevitable demise, David runs to Yahweh and pleads with him: Preserve me! Keep me! Protect me! Watch over me!
You can ask the question this way: what turns life from, as Tolstoy said, “a terrible and huge deception which [hides] both life and death from us” and makes it full of meaning and life and promise and blessing? And the answer is the core truth of this Psalm—the central truth of Easter—God saves from death. God is a God of resurrection. And if God saves from death, then we should first cry out to him to preserve us from it. This Psalm is a crescendo, then, of joy in the fact that God does save from death. And David, through the meditations of this Psalm, lifts himself out of fear and despondency and hopelessness into the joy of the promise of eternal life and pleasure in God’s presence. So, as we walk through this crescendo of a Psalm, let us break it into three primary portions: The Petition, The Affirmations (we will spend most time here), and the Conclusion.
I. The Petition (v1)
The petition to the Lord is very simple: “Preserve me, O God…” The Hebrew term means to guard, to watch over, to keep, to protect. It is the picture of a bodyguard to a king, a watchman to a city, a shepherd to his sheep, or a father to his children. This is the only request in the psalm. It is full of urgency and even has a tone of fear in it. You don’t yell out, “Protect me!” unless something is seriously trying to harm you! Whatever is happening in David’s life is creating in him a fear of death which drives him to prayer.
David is driven to urgent prayer because he sees his desperate need. A sense of need creates an urgency to seek help. If your house was foreclosing, if your family was starving, if an illness was serious, you would not waste time about other things. You would get right to it because you feel your need keenly. Perhaps the reason why we do not pray is because we do not yet feel our need as keenly as we ought.
Yet, see the ground of his prayer: for [because] in you I take refuge. “I pray to you to preserve me from death, God of creation, because I have hidden myself in your saving and covenant love. I know that you are an adequate protection, a rock in which (like Moses) I can hide from the dangers outside.” In trouble, the Lord is David’s only destination. All true saints resonate with David’s cry of petition:
Dear refuge of my weary soul / On thee when sorrows rise / on thee, when waves of trouble roll / my fainting hope relies / To thee I tell each rising grief / for thou alone cans’t heal / Thy word can bring a sweet relief / For ev’ry pain I feel.
But oh! When gloomy doubts prevail / I fear to call thee mine / the springs of comfort seem to fail / and all my hopes decline / Yet gracious God, where shall I flee? / Thou art my only trust / And still my soul would cleave to thee / though prostrate in the dust.
We pray to God because we trust in him. We ask him to save us because we see him as trustworthy. Because he is a refuge to us, the ever present help in time of need, we are quick to go to him and ask whatever we need. But we also pray because we genuinely see our need. When we see our sin, weakness, and shortcomings, it is as natural to pray as breathing, eating, or sleeping. That’s what David sees. He sees his need clearly—so he runs to God.
I know when someone has truly seen their need by how they pray. There is a kind of prayer that is surface-level, trite, gift-oriented, that bubbles up only when blessings are threatened and trials trouble our comforts. But there is a kind of prayer that sighs not under the pressure of threatened blessings, but under the weight of remaining sin and under the pressure of dire need. People who truly see their need for spiritual life do not waste time speaking of other things with the Lord. They get straight to the point and go straight to the source.
Transition: Yet, many have cried out to God for preservation from death. It is only those who know him savingly who will finally be saved from it. So, David then goes on to stir himself to joy and thankfulness and assurance by reminding himself of all the blessings that the Lord has given to him, things which the Lord has done in his life that tell him he does know the Lord savingly.
II. The Affirmations (v2-8)
David now goes on to make a series of affirmations in what we might rightly call “self-talk.” In fact, the LSB gets the flavor across nicely in v2: “O my soul, you have said to Yahweh, ‘You are my Lord.’” Do you hear the dynamic of David’s request? I’m worried! Preserve me, Lord! I trust you! And then he immediately turns against himself and puts himself on the witness stand and seeks assurance: “Have you said to the Lord that he is your Lord?” And he responds, “Yes, I have.” And again, “Do you have any good apart from him?” “No.” “How about the saints in the land? Are they excellent to you? Do you delight in them?” “Yes.” “Do you hate idolatry and the names of false gods?” “Yes.” “Does Yahweh hold your lot? Are you satisfied with the inheritance that he has given you?” “Yes” “Does he counsel you? Is he always before you? Is he at your right hand?” “Yes” “So, are you shaken?” “No.” Which then will lead him to the conclusion, “Therefore, my heart is glad!” Why? You will not abandon my soul to the grave! Why? Because I have a saving relationship to you.”
Living faith produces these forms of obedience. It is right, especially when we fear death, to go to these signs and seek assurance by reminding that these are products of the Lord’s grace which he performs only in his children. So, then, what are these affirmations? He affirms 5 truths:
1. True faith is proven by satisfaction in the goodness of the Lord (v2).
Notice: “I say to Yahweh—the covenant God, the God of steadfast love, the God of the promises—'You are my Lord.’” That is, you are my master. The place where David begins to seek assurance is how his soul responds to the mastery of the Lord. He says to Yahweh, the one true God, “You are my adoni, my master.” I want to obey you. I am under your lordship.
Yet, it is not simply submission to Lordship, but gladhearted submission to his Lordship because it sees the Lord as the ultimate good—the satisfying goodness in all other good. Notice again how David speaks: “I have no good apart from you.” It is not that he has a bunch of good things, and God is just one of them, or first among them. Rather, it is that God is the one good thing that makes all other things good to him. “All that is good in my life is only good because of its connection to you.” Good things are only good because they point us to God.
James 1:17: “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.” Good things are only good because they are gifts from the Father. If we receive any good thing apart from God, it ceases to be a gift and immediately becomes an idol. So, we cannot receive his good gifts without receiving him first. To treasure anything like you treasure God, to have another God “beside him,” is to become an idolater and forfeit the gain of all good things.
2. True faith is shown by the delight it takes in earthly fellowship with God’s people (v3).
It stands to reason that if nothing is truly good apart from God, then the best aspect of any human relationship is the regard it has to God. Relationships with no reference to God are not truly good, satisfying, or delightful. Thus, after David affirms that God is his ultimate good, he immediately turns to the saints as his highest earthly delight.
And notice what he particularly enjoys about the saints: their holiness and their majesty. The beauty of the saints is their holiness. That’s what “saint” means. Those who are set apart for God. Think about who truly “delights” you. Why? Is it not because they have a powerful godliness? God is uniquely the center of all they do. These people we revere, look up to, and delight in. Holiness is a delightful, pleasant thing.
But David also looks at their majesty. “They are the majestic ones.” There is more majesty in a saint than in a king. Of course, we all still struggle with remaining sin, so we must see this majesty now with the eyes of faith. Nevertheless, every Christian is a creature which one day we would be tempted to worship if we met them now. The holy ones are full of majesty, nobility, and excellency. And that majesty is seen by the eyes of faith.
Your love for God is measured by your love for his people. We are the body of Christ. What we do for his body, we do for him. “Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me” (Matt 25:40). If you find no delight in his people, you do not delight in him. How can we say that we love the Father and when we hate his other kids? So, do you seek out the church when it gathers? Is being here a priority? Is church a delight to you? Is it something you sacrifice to make happen rather than something to do when its convenient? Are these saints, in your estimation, “the excellent ones”? This then implies…
3. True faith is seen in its aversion to idolatry and idolaters (v4).
If God’s people are a delight to me, then God’s enemies will repulse me. Those opposed to God will not find a home in the heart of faith. If we delight in the holiness of the saints, then those who walk in unholiness will cause the opposite of delight: aversion.
To be clear, this does not mean that we don’t love God’s enemies. Just as Christ laid down his life for his enemies, we are to lay down our lives for our enemies. We are called to love those who hate us, bless those who curse us, pray for those who persecute us. But, loving them is not the same thing as delighting in them. There is an appropriate separation that believers feel from unbelievers, one that does not seek to be “unequally yoked.” This is why Paul prohibits believers from marrying unbelievers (1 Corinthians 7:39). Why? The same reason Moses prohibited Israel from intermarrying with the nations. The great mistake of evangelistic dating is the idea that the unbeliever will be drawn to Christ through the relationship. While that may happen, far more often the opposite happens. The believer is drawn to compromise precisely because they put their delight in someone who “pours out drink offerings of blood” to other gods.
David says that their sorrows will be multiplied. The sorrows of idolatry multiply not because there is no truly satisfying good in this life apart from God, but also because their god cannot save them from death—the point of the Psalm. All they do is useless and pointless because their God cannot preserve them! So, why would David worship them? And why should we join them? Can money save you from death? Or the healthcare system? Can politicians save you from death? Or policies? It ought to be our experience that we feel like an alien, a stranger, or an exile Monday through Saturday and like a son on Sunday.
4. True faith rests secure in the future b/c its future is built on God’s promises rather than human power (vv5-6).
They key is the words “you hold my lot.” He momentarily breaks from his self-talk and addresses the Lord directly. Notice how much he talks about his possession. David had received a portion of land—a “lot”—as part of his eternal inheritance in Israel. Very stringent laws surrounded the possession and the selling of land. Great pains were taken to ensure that the land stayed in its proper tribe. That’s because the land was emblematic of being part of God’s people. To lose your land as an Israelite was to lose your share in the promises. This is why the exile was so traumatic to Israelites and the highest form of the curses in Deuteronomy 28.
David affirms, “You are the portion of my possession.” He is saying, “Of the land that you have promised me, it is not the land but the landlord that I love most. When I consider my possession, my allotment, the best part about it is my share in Yahweh.” Of all that we have been promised, Yahweh must be our choicest possession. And, David says, “my cup”—a universal sign of blessing as a cup overflowing with wine at a feast. All his future and all his blessing were wrapped up in the Lord. In fact, this is how David talks about his inheritance in v6, “I have a beautiful inheritance.” Literally it is: “my possession is beautiful upon me”—a way of saying it almost as though the beauty of his inheritance rested upon him like a weight.
Consider how death would threaten his inheritance, and how much sense it would make then for him to say, “you hold my lot”! He looks at his pleasant places, his beautiful inheritance, and he says “You hold it for me!” If David is not alive, then he cannot inherit it. So, while he descends into the grave, while his body saw corruption, it is as though he hands his lot over to Yahweh and says, “Keep this for me while I’m gone. Watch over it. I know you are able to hold it, support it, grasp it, keep it safe for me.” Particularly because he knows that the Lord will resurrect him.
5. True faith constantly takes counsel with and dwells on God (vv7-8).
And here David begins to bring all of this together and set up for his conclusion. He says, “I know these things because the Lord has given me counsel. My teacher is the Lord. I know these things because he has taught me.” Yet, how has he done that? David says, literally, “Indeed, at nights my kidneys rebuke me.”
Kidneys are the seat of the affections. And the “instruction” that David speaks of is correction or discipline. And the fact that “night” is plural gives the sense of “night by night.” So, to paraphrase, David is saying, “Night by night my affections rise up to discipline me.” And that is how the Lord has counseled me and taught me these things. Add, then, the fact that traumatic things happen at night—demonic activity, difficult matters of prayer, answers to difficult questions, dealing with unconfessed sin, and the like.
Here’s how I think this worked. He is now at a place where he blesses God because he has received counsel, and he knows to cry out to the Lord to preserve him from death. But that wisdom came from a process of night by night as the traumatic process of working through these questions woke him up during the night. The Lord brought him to this point through many a midnight waking where the disturbed mind wakes up and is shaken and looks to God for answers and prays and cries out to him for answers, and does so over and over and over. And it is through that process of rehearsal that the Lord brings us understanding. He has come now to a place where Yahweh is always before him, is at his right hand, and is no longer shaken by these difficult questions. We overcome fear of death by rehearsed truth.
Transition: And now David takes this to its logical conclusion: joy.
III. The Conclusion (v9-11)
This, then, leads to the conclusion: David is absolutely certain that he will be saved from death in order to have complete joy in God’s presence and forever pleasure at his right hand. His heart—the internal control center of his life. His glory—his tongue. His flesh—his physical body. His whole being is now overflowing with joy and thankfulness because of these things. And he is confident that, even though he will die, his physical body is safe. God will keep it. Why? Because God will not abandon him. He will preserve him, watch over him, and keep him. He will raise him from the dead.
Yet here is the complication: David did die and he did see corruption. David knew he would die. God told David that he would die in the covenant he made with David (2 Sam 7:12). David himself also charged Solomon to obey the Lord on his deathbed because thereby the Lord would establish his kingdom after him (1 Kings 2:1-4). Yet, David talks here and other places about his own resurrection from the grave. So the necessary conclusion here is that while David is in fact talking about his eventual resurrection from the grave, he is also and more fundamentally talking about the one he knew would reign over an eternal kingdom—the very kingdom promised to him in 2 Samuel 7. He had confidence that he would not remain dead, to be abandoned in the grave, because of the work of this greater Son of his.
So, what then does he mean when he says that his “Holy One” will not see corruption? Where does David use this language of “Holy One”?
One notable place David uses the term is in Psalm 89. Read Ps 89:19-37. He speaks to the “Holy One” about one called “David, my servant”—a title used over and over in Isaiah to refer to the coming, suffering servant long after David’s death. He is anointed—messiah—crushing his enemies, possessing the steadfast love of God, who like Yahweh rules the raging sea, who is the Son of God, calling God his “father” and his “Rock,” he is the firstborn, the highest of the kings of the earth, whose offspring and throne shall be established forever. What better way to establish an eternal throne and an eternal kingdom than with a king that can never die because he has conquered death for himself and his people?
So, who is the Holy One? In one sense, it is David. In another sense, the Holy One is someone like David yet greater than David. Peter makes this connection explicit: Acts 2:22-36. Paul also makes it explicit: Acts 13:16-41.
Jesus has been raised from the dead. God has fulfilled all his promises by raising Jesus, his Son. He did not see corruption. Therefore, forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you, and you may be freed from everything the law could not free you from.
Now you know the path of life! “I am the way the truth the life!” Now you know the path to fullness of joy in the resurrection! Now you have pleasures forevermore at God’s right hand! The way to life and joy and enjoyment of God is Christ’s resurrection. To know Jesus is to live, now and in the future. To know Jesus is to have fullness of joy in God’s presence, now and in the future. To know Jesus is to have pleasures forevermore at his right hand, now and in the future. Because God did not allow his holy one to see corruption—because He is Risen—the path of life is open to us.
Conclusion
Therefore, the risen Christ is offered to you this morning. Take him. In his name your sins may be forgiven. He did not deserve to die, but he willingly went to the grave for sins that were not his. “God made him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf that we might become the righteousness of God in him.” And because he never broke the law, death could not hold him. He never needed to pay the wages of sin. Therefore, that justice might be served, and that the one who was innocent, who was righteous, was raised from the dead. And he is alive today. And he has ascended into heaven, where he is even now. And he has sent his Holy Spirit to dwell in his church and commissioned his church to proclaim to the world that forgiveness of sins is freely given to all who turn away from their sins and trust wholly and only in Jesus.