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Psalm 16
Sermon preached by the Revd David Parsons in Street Parish Church
1 July 2007
Preserve me, O God, for in you I take refuge. I say to the LORD, "You are my Lord;
I have no good apart from you."
As for the saints in the land, they are the excellent ones,
in whom is all my delight.
The sorrows of those who run after another god shall multiply; their drink offerings of blood I will not pour out or take their names on my lips.
The LORD is my chosen portion and my cup; you hold my lot.
The lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; indeed, I have a beautiful inheritance.
I bless the LORD who gives me counsel; in the night also my heart instructs me.
I have set the LORD always before me; because he is at my right hand, I shall not be shaken.
Therefore my heart is glad, and my whole being rejoices; my flesh also dwells secure.
For you will not abandon my soul to Sheol, or let your holy one see corruption.
You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy;
at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.
At choir practice on Thursday we had a little discussion about the Psalm we were rehearsing for this evening. 'My reins also chasten me in the night season' was a problem.
I said, sounding more confident than I was, that 'reins' had to do with 'renal', rather than what you guide horses with. And because I wasn't confident, I went home to look it up, and to my relief one of the Bible translations told me that the Hebrew word did really mean 'kidneys'. The Hebrews associated various emotions with parts of the body.
And from there I went on to take a closer look at the whole psalm, and found that it's a wonderful psalm. It's well worth spending a few minutes unpacking it.
The psalmist - let's call him David, though we can't be sure - begins with a request:
Preserve me, O God, for in you I take refuge.
Interestingly, it's the only request in the whole psalm. All the rest is about what David knows about God and what he has done. But this request makes the relationship that David has with God quite clear. Preserve me, O God, for in you I take refuge.
When I was a little boy growing up in Dublin, there was an older boy living opposite called Wally Putt. He went to the convent school down the road, and I went to a different school a bike-ride away. He had his gang of friends and I had mine. But one afternoon I took it into my head to join his gang playing in the deserted garden of the big house - Wally lived in the gate-house. They let me tag along for a while, and then for some reason they seemed to turn on me. I ran for home, across the road. I can just remember the feeling of relief when I got back to my own home and to my Mother. Preserve me, O God, for in you I take refuge.
God is home for David. God is safety. God is a refuge. This psalm was written as it were at the monent when he rushed up to his mother, with the hostile gang after him, and said 'Save me!'
Now there's a big difference in real life between running to God for safety and a child running to his mother for safety. The mother can usually see to it that the physical danger goes away. The child won't be hit by the gang. God doesn't always make physical danger, or fiancial difficulties, or sickness, go away immediately. The noble army of martyrs tell us that very clearly. God didn't stop the mob killing those three Christians in Turkey that we read about in this month's LIFE. Sometimes he does save people in wonderful ways. I have had very many experiences of being threatened by some disaster, large or very small, of praying with some urgency and even desperation, and of the disaster being averted. I'm sure you have too.
In fact in Hebrews there's a fascinating summary of what God did and didn't do for people of faith. Notice that some were rescued and other were not:
And what more shall I say? For time would fail me to tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, of David and Samuel and the prophets-- who through faith conquered kingdoms, enforced justice, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the power of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, were made strong out of weakness, became mighty in war, put foreign armies to flight. Women received back their dead by resurrection. [All good and fine - but now...] Some were tortured, refusing to accept release, so that they might rise again to a better life. Others suffered mocking and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were killed with the sword. They went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, afflicted, mistreated -- of whom the world was not worthy -- wandering about in deserts and mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth.
I was struck by what someone wrote about a child in the London blitz. With the bombs falling all around, sheltering under the kitchen table, the child was terrified. But his mother put her arms around the child and said 'It's all right.' And though the danger was still just the same, and mother and child might both have been blown to tatters at any moment, it was all right. The child was in his mother's love and care, whatever happened. It was all right.
Let's go on to see what David says about being all right in God.
I say to the LORD, "You are my Lord; I have no good apart from you."
As we might say, nothing is any good without you. We know it all too well on the human level: when someone loses a husband or wife, there seems to be no joy in doing anything special. The country walk that was so delightful when it was shared is now just a muddy uncomfortable trudge. And it happens in an even deeper way with God. With him, everything is good and full of life; without him - well, just look at the way people desperately look for pleasure.
My godly grandmother quoted these lines to me:
Heaven above is softer blue,
Earth around is sweeter green;
Something lives in every hue,
Christless eyes have never seen.
But there's so much more. David found the joy of other believers:
As for the saints in the land, they are the excellent ones, in whom is all my delight.
or as another Bible version puts it,
Your people are wonderful, and they make me happy.
It's easy to take other Christians for granted. David knew that it was a delight and privilege to be part of such a wonderful group of people - or a group of such wonderful people. This is something that the people who reject organised Christianity for individual 'spirituality' miss out on. That's not to say that Christians are perfect - far from it. The first thing we say when we meet for worship is that "We have left undone those things which we ought to have done; And we have done those things which we ought not to have done; And there is no health in us." But believers have a shared aim in life, a common Friend, and we belong together.
Now comes something controversial.
The sorrows of those who run after another god shall multiply; their drink offerings of blood I will not pour out or take their names on my lips.
The LORD is my chosen portion and my cup; you hold my lot.
or, in a simpler version,
but worshippers of other gods will have much sorrow.
I refuse to offer sacrifices of blood to those gods or worship in their name.
You, LORD, are all I want! You are my choice, and you keep me safe.
The fashion these days is to claim that all religions are equally valid. People like to talk of the Christian tradition, rather than Christian faith. A woman priest in California has embraced Islam and is still functioning as a Christian priest, with official backing.
Now things have changed a lot since David's time. In his day The LORD, Yahweh, was still regarded by most Israelites as an Israelite God, just as Dagon was a Philistine god. The majestic statements that we find in the later chapters of Isaiah, that the LORD is the God of the whole earth, were still in the future.
But today we see that there is only one God. The arguments are about the nature of the one God. Is he the God of Moses? Is he the God of whom Muhamed is the prophet? Is she the goddess celebrated in Glastonbury ceremonies? Is he the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ? Or can he be all of these?
My own working belief is that we stick to Jesus, and to God as Jesus knew him, and that is enough for me, and I shall do my best to enable people of any faith on none to come to know Jesus and God as Jesus knew him; but at the same time I am willing to accept that God is much greater than my understanding of him, and that he may well be making himself known in some way to goddess worshippers and Muslims and others - though I do not believe that the beliefs of these groups can be right where they contradict the teaching of Jesus.
So I am with David in saying
I refuse to offer sacrifices of blood to those gods or worship in their name.
You, LORD, are all I want! You are my choice, and you keep me safe.
The rest of Psalm 16 really tells us why God is the best choice. Life with God now is good. Life with God in the future will be even better. There is little to be added to the words of the Psalm. I quote from the simple translation:
You make my life pleasant, and my future is bright.
So what are the feature of the Good Life now? Guidance, freedom from fear, joy, peace of mind.
I praise you, LORD, for being my guide.
Even in the darkest night, your teachings fill my mind.
I will always look to you, as you stand beside me and protect me from fear.
With all my heart, I will celebrate, and I can safely rest.
We have already reminded ourselves that this is an inward thing. The outward course of our life may not run smoothly, but we can still be protected from fear, we can still have a life of celebration, we can still safely rest. And then, afterwards?
I am your chosen one. You won't leave me in the grave or let my body decay.
You have shown me the path to life, and you make me glad by being near to me.
Sitting at your right side, I will always be joyful.
St Peter, whose day was celebrated on Friday, quoted this psalm on the Day of Pentecost, applying it to the Lord Jesus. David's body did decay, Peter said, but Jesus rose from death, so the psalm referred to Jesus.
And so it does, and to everyone who shares by trust in Jesus' death and resurrection. The future is bright, not because of a mobile phone, but because we belong to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
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Thursday 28th of August 2008
