SPIRITUAL
DIARY FOR 01-03-2012
My Worship Time Focus: A Joyful Psalm
Bible Reading
& Meditation Reference: Psalm 16
Message
of the verses: “1 A Mikhtam of
David: Preserve me, O God, for I take
refuge in You. 2 I said to the LORD, "You are my Lord; I have no good besides You." 3
As for the saints who are in the earth, They are the majestic ones in whom is
all my delight. 4
The sorrows of those who have bartered for another god will be multiplied; I
shall not pour out their drink offerings of blood, Nor will I take their names
upon my lips. 5 The
LORD is the portion of my
inheritance and my
cup; You support my
lot. 6 The lines have fallen to me in pleasant places; Indeed, my heritage is beautiful
to me. 7 I will bless the LORD who has counseled me; Indeed, my mind instructs me in
the night.
“8 I have set the LORD continually before
me; Because He is at my
right hand, I will not be shaken. 9 Therefore my heart is glad and my glory rejoices; My flesh also will dwell securely. 10 For You will
not abandon my soul
to Sheol; Nor will You allow Your Holy One to undergo decay. 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.”
This is a personal and joyful psalm
and it is also a “Mikhtam” psalm as are Psalm’s 56-60. The word is not really understood by Bible
scholars so we will leave it at that.
The psalm is also a Messianic psalm as this psalm prophesies the resurrection
of the Lord Jesus Christ and it is mentioned two times in the book of Acts,
once by Peter (Acts 2:25-28) and then again by Paul in Acts 13:35.
As far as what occasion that David
wrote this psalm it could have been right after he received the news that it
would be through his line that Messiah would be born. We read about this in 2Samuel 7 and some of
the wording there is similar to this psalm.
When I copied this psalm the first
time at the top of this page I highlighted the word “my” in order to show that
this was a personal psalm for we see my over a dozen times in this psalm along
with the words me and I.
Dr. Wiersbe writes “As he praised God
for His grace and goodness, David presented three descriptions of the Lord, and
all three may be applied to Jesus Christ today.”
The
Lord of Life (vv. 1-8): We see the
words “Preserve me” at the very beginning of this psalm and these words do not
mean that David is in some kind of trouble like we have seen in some of the
earlier psalm, but this simply means that he needed God’s constant care and
oversight so that he might bring honor to the Lord and also that he might enjoy
every good thing that can be given to him by God. We know that one of the attributes of God is
His goodness and apart from Him we have nothing good. “Jas 1:17 Every good thing given and every
perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom
there is no variation or shifting shadow.”
It was on the 28th of August that I studied this passage in
the book of James and the following is how I wrote out this verse with the help
of Dr. Wiersbe, “Every gift that God
gives us is perfect, and the way that He gives it to us is perfect, and He
keeps on giving us gifts all of the time, even when we do not realize that He
is giving them to us, and God is not like the moving of the planets and stars,
for He never changes because He cannot change for worse because He is holy, and
He cannot change for better because He is perfect.”
A good relationship (vv. 1-2): “Preserve me, O God, for I take refuge in
You. 2 I said to the LORD, "You are my Lord; I have no good besides You.’”
We have
seen in the introduction of this section from the verse in James that the Lord
is our highest good and the greatest treasure and the giver of all good gifts,
and of course the gift of the Lord Jesus Christ is surely included in those
good gifts that God has given to us.
Jesus is the highest privilege in life.
We may think that we have something that is good, however if it doesn’t
come from God it is not good: “For You
meet him with the blessings of good things; Surely goodness and lovingkindness
will follow me all the days of my life, And I will dwell in the house of the
LORD forever.” (Psalm 21:3; 23:6).
Dr.
Wiersbe writes: “When Jesus Christ is
your Savior (refuge) and Lord you experience God’s goodness even in the midst
of trials. Our relationship to
ourselves, our circumstances, other people, and the future depends on our
relationship to the Lord.”
A good companionship (vv.3-4): “3 As for the saints who are in the earth,
They are the majestic ones in whom is all my delight. 4 The sorrows of those
who have bartered for another god will be multiplied; I shall not pour out
their drink offerings of blood, Nor will I take their names upon my lips.”
We see
in this portion of Psalm 16 as we have seen in earlier psalms that there are
two groups described here and earlier I used John 3:36 to describe them: “"He who believes in the Son has eternal
life; but he who does not obey the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God
abides on him.’” This was as true in the
day that David wrote this psalm as it is today for there were some that
believed in the Lord then and were saved and some that did not and were not
saved, and the same is true for those after the cross, for we know that there
are people out there who have trusted the Lord Jesus Christ as their personal
Savior and Lord and some who only speak His name when they are cursing and thus
reject Him.
Dr.
Wiersbe writes “In spite of our faults and failures, believers are God’s elite,
His nobility on earth.” With that said
believers are to be the ones who tell others about who Jesus Christ is and what
He has done for them. We are to be salt
and light and we are to be in this world but not of this world. We are the hands and the feet and the mouth
of the Lord Jesus Christ while we are here on earth, for Jesus told His
disciples just before He was going to the cross that it was better that He go
away and that there would be more miracles that would be done after He left
than if He would have stayed. Every time
someone accepts the Lord Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord we see a miracle and
we as believers are a part of that miracle when we just tell others the truth
about Christ and what He has done for them.
A good stewardship (vv. 5-6): “5 The LORD is the portion of my inheritance
and my cup; You support my lot. 6 The
lines have fallen to me in pleasant places; Indeed, my heritage is beautiful to
me.”
We know
that when Joshua lead the children of Israel into the Promised Land that each
tribe was given an inheritance from the Lord but the tribe of Levi and they
were the tribe that served at the tabernacle and ate the holy sacrifices, which
means that the priests and the Levites had the Lord’s special
inheritances. David now sees himself in
that privileged position as seen in verse five of this psalm. Dr. Wiersbe
writes “To possess great wealth but not have the Lord is poverty indeed (Luke
12:13-21), and to enjoy the gifts but ignore the Giver is wickedness
indeed. If Jesus is the Lord of our
lives, then the possessions we have and the circumstances we are in represent the inheritance He
gives us.”
A good fellowship (vv. 7-8): “7 I
will bless the LORD who has counseled me; Indeed, my mind instructs me in the
night. 8 I have set the LORD continually
before me; Because He is at my right hand, I will not be shaken.”
Dr.
Wiersbe suggests that David went to “night school,” because of what is said in
verse seven. The word nigh is plural and
this suggests that there were many nights that David went to school, for the
word instructs suggests the hard and
difficult times that David went through and this is where the Lord became so
very precious to him and taught David the things that he learned from the
Lord. It may have been during this
“Night School” that David got the words from the Holy Spirit to write many of
his psalms.
We
see the statement “He is at my right hand” and this speaks of the Lord as David’s
defender and His advocate. Since the Lord was his defender and guard he had
nothing to fear and we can see that this was true in David’s life when he said
that he “set the Lord continually before him.
The
Conqueror of Death (vv. 9-10): “9 Therefore my heart is glad and my glory
rejoices; My flesh also will dwell securely. 10
For You will not abandon my soul to Sheol; Nor will You allow Your Holy
One to undergo decay.”
Paul
writes these words in 1Cor. 15:19 “If we have hoped in Christ in this life
only, we are of all men most to be pitied.”
1Corinthians 15 is commonly referred to as the “Resurrection Chapter”
and it is in this chapter that Paul explains about the resurrection. This a long chapter with 58 verses in it and
I want to go down to the end of the chapter in order to explain or point out something, “51 ¶ Behold, I tell you a mystery; we will not all
sleep, but we will all be changed, 52 in
a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet; for the trumpet will
sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed.
53 For this perishable must put on the
imperishable, and this mortal must put on immortality. 54 But when this perishable will have put on the
imperishable, and this mortal will have put on immortality, then will come
about the saying that is written, "DEATH IS SWALLOWED UP in victory.
55 "O DEATH, WHERE IS YOUR VICTORY?
O DEATH, WHERE IS YOUR STING?" 56
The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law; 57 but thanks be to God, who gives us the
victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
“58 ¶ Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast,
immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your toil is
not in vain in the Lord.”
First
of all this is one of the sections from the NT that explain what is called the
“rapture” of the church. Rapture is not
actually in the Bible but is a Latin word that means to “snatch out,” and that
is what the Lord will do at this event called the “Rapture” He will snatch out
all believers of the Church age into the clouds and then transport all to
heaven. David was writing of the hope of
the resurrection. The OT does not have a
lot to say about the resurrection, but it does speak of it in the books of Job
and Daniel. As we looked at the beginning
of 1Cor. 15 and verse 19 we saw little hope but after reading the end part of
the chapter we have hope and that hope is in the resurrection, and Jesus Christ
was the “first fruit” of the resurrection and therefore because of that we need
not fear death for Paul writes “Death is swallowed up in victory ‘O death,
where is your victory? O death, where is your sting.’”
The Joy of Eternity (v.11): “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.”
We now
that some people make fun of the idea of heaven, one such person was a noted
philosopher and Harvard University professor Alfred North Whitehead and he said
one day to a friend “As for the Christian theology, can you imagine anything
more appallingly idiotic than the Christian idea of heaven?” Well others today
and in earlier times make fun of something that they do not know much about and
that is heaven. David is speaking of things
that will be going on in heaven, for heaven is a place where God dwells, and
the Son of God dwells along with the Holy Spirit and someday all believers will
dwell in the new heaven that is described in the book of Revelations. If you want a good picture of heaven read
Revelations chapters four through five and you will see what is going on
there. We will be enjoying the Lord and
worshiping Him without things that prohibit us doing so in a perfect way today,
things like the flesh, the world system, and being in this body we now
have. Dr. Wiersbe writes “The pleasures
of heaven will be far beyond any pleasures we have known here on earth, and as
we enjoy the Lord and serve Him, we will not be restricted or encumbered by
time, physical weakness, or the consequences of sin.” That will be a great experience when this
happens to all believers.
Spiritual meaning for my life today: When I look at the death of Jesus Christ on
the cross and realize that He did that for me I am truly amazed. I sometimes miss out on thinking about the
resurrection of Jesus from the grave and the importance of it. I mean I know that He has been resurrected
and is now at the right had of the Father, but I think that what I need to do
is dwell on the importance of it. It is
in my head, but it needs to be in my heart is what I am saying.
My
Steps of Faith for Today:
1.
Remember the importance of
the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
2.
Romans 12:1-2.
3.
Philippians 4:11b.
4.
Proverbs 3:5-6.
5.
Ephesians 6:10-18.
6.
Psalm 139:23-24.
1/3/2012 11:06:05 AM
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