Praying Our Joys | Psalm 16
Andy Lindgren | July 17, 2016
Good morning!
For those of you who don’t know me my name is Andy Lindgren, and my wife Jenni and I and our kids have been a part of Fulkerson for about a year and a half now.
Brian asked me to fill in today for him as we continue to examine the Psalms together, with a specific focus on praying the Psalms. This morning we’re going to be looking at the sixteenth Psalm, Psalm 16. The title of the message is “Praying Our Joys”. So if you could turn to Psalm 16, we’ll read it together.
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.
This is God’s Word.
I was at an event a couple weeks ago now where there was a cover band—you know, just a cover band playing some secular songs. I’m not usually at events where there are cover bands, but they started playing a song that I don’t think I had heard for about 15 years. It was a song that was on the radio a lot when I was in middle school, high school. It wasn’t a song I particularly liked—it wasn’t one of my favorite songs—but not long after the song started I was amazed that I knew almost all the lyrics to the song.
I’m sure a lot of you have had a similar experience; there’s a song from your youth that all of a sudden comes back to you, and all of a sudden you know the lyrics, and you’re singing along to it.
I say that because there are scholars who have a consensus among them that in the culture in which Jesus grew up, if you went up to the average ten-year-old boy he would probably know the words to all 150 psalms. To us that seems a little overwhelming, until you realize that they sang the psalms. The psalms were there sacred songs; it was their hymnbook; it was what they sang. These were the songs that they learned when they were doing chores, when the family was going to the synagogue together—these were their songs.
Today we’re going to be looking at one of the sacred songs of ancient Israel, one penned by David and inspired by the Holy Spirit. This is a psalm of confidence, of joy, and of expectation.
I. The Need for God and the Search for Joy
In verses 1-4, the first thing we notice in this psalm is the need for God and the search for joy.
Verses 1-4: “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, nor take their names on my lips.”
(1) So the first thing we see is the need for preservation. We aren’t exactly clear what David is asking to be preserved from here. In other psalms it’s very obvious—he’s on the run from somebody or he’s fearing for his very life. Here it’s just a kind of a general plea for preservation, and in talking about praying the psalms I love how this psalm starts out, because most of the time when I go to pray this is how I feel.
“Preserve me! Help! I need help; I’m not where I should be spiritually, I’m not where I should be mentally, I’m not focused enough. Can I just start by asking for help? I need help; I need Your preservation; I need Your help.”
This is how this psalm starts out. But while we aren’t explicitly told the reason that David is asking for preservation, the context of the psalm seems to suggest that he’s asking for preservation from the life of the idol-worshipper and from the sorrows that come with it, from the life whose pursuit of other joys besides God, of other idols, ends in multiplied sorrows and ultimately in abandonment in the realm of the dead. So he’s essentially asking to be saved from a life of sorrows that ends in futility. “Preserve me from this, God.”
There are three titles for God in this psalm. In the English translation it’s “God”, and then it’s “LORD” capital, in all caps—L-O-R-D. Then there’s “Lord” again, capital L, then lower-case o-r-d. The title of God, the Hebrew for that is El, and it was the most common name for God, which is why in English it’s translated “God”, because that’s our most common name. It’s the strong, it’s the mighty one; there are connotations of salvation. This is the God who saves. He’s God! He’s strong! He’s mighty!
And then when you see “LORD”—in most English translations “LORD” (with all caps)—that’s translating God’s name of self-revelation. It’s Yahweh; it’s “I Am that I Am”. It’s the very nature of God that He revealed to Moses in the burning bush, and it’s His covenant name with His people.
Capital L, lower-case o-r-d, that would be Adonai, which Adonai in Hebrew was basically the title “Lord”, so “master”, or “sir”, or “ruler”.
So when you look at the way that these words appear in the psalm, in the first couple verses, David is asking for God to preserve him. Then he addresses God by God’s covenant name. He says, “God, will you preserve me?” Then he says, “I say to Yahweh—I say to God—You are my Adonai; You are my Master.” Then asking for preservation, David proclaims that God is his rightful master.
(2) This leads us on a theme of preservation to the fact that we need a good master in our lives. Western Americans kind of bristle at the thought of that, but it’s so true; it’s so essential to the human condition that we need a master who actually knows what he’s doing and knows how to lovingly lead and rule our lives.
It’s been famously said and beautifully summarized that the “chief end of man is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever.” John Calvin said, “He who has in himself an absolute fullness of all good has given himself to be enjoyed by.” Augustine beautifully wrote, “Unless turned toward You, wherever the soul of man turns it is enmeshed in sorrows, even though it is surrounded by beautiful things outside You and outside of itself.”
Scripture reveals to us that God is the ultimate good, and He created a physical world for the composite spiritual-physical creatures that we are to indwell, His image-bearers to indwell. He created a physical world for us.
So therefore there exists, in this world, what Augustine called the “correctly-ordered loves”—in other words, that we love everything that there is in proportion to its actual worth. What idol worship is, is the loves are all out of order. Because, in correctly ordered loves, God is to be loved ultimately because He actually has the most intrinsic worth out of everything in all creation. Everything came from Him and is sustained by Him and will ultimately return to Him, and everything else was created for His glory.
But living a life of correctly ordered loves—that’s only possible when God is at the top and when we intentionally place Him at the top and allow Him that spot in our lives. He’s at the top acting as our Master, our Lord, our Adonai, ruling over us and showing us the true worth of Himself, the good that He gives us through His creation, and also the danger of loving things outside of their proper order.
David says, “There is no good apart from You,” that every good thing in our lives is but a dim reflection of the good contained in the Godhead, and David is joyfully proclaiming that. Even in the minds of believers, I think, there’s a tendency to just take for granted so many things in our lives and so many things in the world around us. “Yes, salvation— that comes from God, and our food— yes, that comes from God…” But there are so many things we enjoy in our lives and are blessed by that we don’t realize ultimately come from the hand of God Himself.
James 1:17 says, “Every good gift—” every good gift! “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.”
David realizes this, that “I have no good apart from You, Lord; that it’s only when my loves are correctly ordered, when I am worshipping You, when I am remaining in You, or when I have seen you for your worth, that I have the ultimate good in my life. Every other thing in my life that’s good, ultimately, Lord, that’s because You placed it there, and I’m not going to abuse those things and put them in a place that they shouldn’t occupy in my life.”
(3) That leads us to the need for joy. When God isn’t our Master, when He is not our Lord, we automatically insert something else in that place. We’re always worshipping something or someone; that’s the human condition, because we were created for worship, and we crave it. We spiritually need to have someone or something who’s the master of our lives, although we don’t see most of our idols that way.
When God isn’t our Master, our Lord, and our loves are out of order, pursuing other gods can only result in multiplied sorrow. Jonathan Edwards noted that “there is no man upon the earth who isn’t earnestly seeking after happiness, and it appears abundantly by the variety of ways they so vigorously seek it. They will twist and turn every way, ply all instruments, to make themselves happy men.”
Edwards goes on to say, “God has created man for this very end, to make him happy in the enjoyment of himself, the Almighty, who was happy from the days of eternity in himself.” We are created in God’s image, and we long for happiness because the triune God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—is always, continuously, joyfully, and exuberantly happy within the communion of the Godhead, within the Trinity. As a result, we crave happiness.
But the reason we don’t seek our happiness from God and we seek it from idols is because we want the joy of God’s presence without the holiness of God’s presence. We want happiness our way, on our terms, and without having to have that shining, convicting presence of God’s holiness in our lives.
So David, in this psalm as he’s praying to the Lord, he’s talking about how he recoils from the idol worship of those around him, and he flees to the gathering of God’s people. The saints in the land—those are the excellent ones in whom is all his delight. They are the people who understand what he does, that God has intrinsic worth beyond all imagination, and his fellow saints with him on the earth bring him great delight because they help restore his focus of rightly ordered loves.
We see this in other ways in our lives. We like to hang out with people who have the same interests as we do; there are certain hobbies we like. Or we just love that conversation that gets going of, you know, “Did you see that movie?” or, “Did you read that book?” or this certain sport, or what have you—we love that fellowship with these other people who delight in what we delight in.
The believer is going to delight in gathering with other believers, and that’s why it’s such a troubling sign in the life of someone who professes, “I’m a believer; I love Jesus, I love God, and yes, I’m in my Bible and I love the Lord, but I’m never around His people. I’m not part of any church. I don’t go to church—I don’t need that. I’m just going to be spiritual on my own.” There’s a real problem there, and there’s a real issue there, if that’s the case.
Augustine also notes—and this is him addressing a prayer to the Lord—he says, “Where is there an unshaken security except with You? The soul commits infidelity when turned from You. What it seeks apart from You it cannot find pure and untainted, until it returns to You.”
David goes on to speak of the drink offerings of blood being poured out, and he’s not going to take the names of other gods on his lips. What he’s referring to is some form of pagan idol worship that was going on in the culture at that time.
We don’t know the exact details of it, but it obviously involved a perversion of an act of worship that the Israelites actually had. They had an offering of wine, a cup of wine at the tabernacle, and this of this wine cup was a special action between the covenant people and their God. But in the perversion of that act the idol worshippers had a cup, but it was filled with blood instead of wine, and instead of offering it to Yahweh they were offering it to an idol.
So, in idol worship there is both the perversion of the method of worship and the object of worship. Instead of a cup of wine it was a cup of blood, and instead of to Yahweh it was to another god; it was to an idol.
Of course, that seems removed from us today in our culture, but idol-worship is certainly not. Tim Keller notes, “Anything that is functionally more important to you than God is an idol.” What do you really go to for fulfillment in your life? What are you really building on? Your foundation will reveal what is your real God. Worship is immensely practical. We are building our hope, our expectation, our joy, our desires, on something. We pick a foundation and we start to build on it.
But the fact is that nothing in all creation can bear the weight of the soul’s longing for joy but God Himself. Cracks will start to appear in the foundation. After a while—maybe at first it will look great, but after a while it’ll start to drop.
We say, “Oh, I have expectations, I have a need for joy, I have a need for something. If only I have a good marriage—a good marriage will fulfill this.” So we take the weight of our soul and we place it on this foundation of marriage. That’s what everything is built on, that’s what’s going to hold it. But over time cracks start to appear, and the foundation starts to sag, and it starts to break through.
That can be applied to a number of other different things. Kids: “If only my kids are happy, and if only they’re living lives that I’m happy with, then I’ll be fulfilled.” But over time cracks start to appear. That foundation—it’s not strong enough to hold the weight of our expectation and our longing for joy.
Augustine, when he was reflecting on his own path, in his pursuit of searching for God and searching for joy, he said, “You were always with me, mercifully angry and flavoring my unlawful pleasures with bitter discontent, so that I might seek pleasures free from discontent. But where could I find such pleasure except in You, O Lord? Only in You can I find true pleasure, You who teaches us by sorrow, who wounds us to heal us, and kills us so that we may not die, apart from You.”
The sorrow that accompanies idol worship is in reality an act of mercy on the behalf of God. He places sorrow in the hearts of those who worship idols to lead us away from those weak foundations that cannot support our joy. God is trying to get us to recognize the temporary limits of created goods. When we put a strain on them that they were never intended to bear, then the foundation begins to crumble.
So David is proclaiming, “I’m not going to do that, I’m not even going to take the names of those other gods on my lips. Instead, I’m going to focused on You—” and this kind of reminds me of that story of Joseph in Potiphar’s house.
Remember, Joseph was sold into slavery, and he was a slave for this wealthy Egyptian by the name of Potiphar. Potiphar’s wife desperately wanted Joseph to sleep with him. He was a righteous man, and he was a godly man, and he was saying, “No. The Lord is my joy, the Lord is my foundation, and I’m not going to do this. I’m not going to turn aside to this idol.”
It gets to the point where they get in a confrontation where she actually grabs his cloak and he runs away and she’s standing, shaking in rage, holding his cloak in her hands as he runs away. As people who pursue God in our search for joy, we’re going to be leaving our cloaks in the hands of idols our entire lives. There’s going to be idol after idol along the path of our lives, standing there shaking in rage because we ran away from them, and they’re standing there holding our cloaks.
II. The Pursuit of God in the Attainment of Joy
Moving on, in verses 5-8, we see the pursuit of God in the attainment of joy. “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.”
So we pursue God who gives content. God Himself is David’s chosen object of ultimate affection. It’s chosen; it’s a purposeful thing, and David is content with his chosen portion, where that word “chosen” also has connotations of allotted portion. This is what God allotted for David; it’s Himself. This is who He designed David to have for his ultimate possession. It was God, it was the person of God.
A.W. Tozer once wrote, “When religion has said its last word, there is little that we need other than God Himself. The evil habit of seeking ‘God and…” effectively prevents us from finding God in full revelation. In the ‘and…’ lies our great woe. If we omit the ‘and…’ we shall soon find God, and in Him we shall find that for which we have all our lives been secretly longing.”
In this section of the psalm, too, we find that David’s knowledge of God’s providence in his life causes him to see what a beautiful future he has. David says, “You hold my lot.”
John Owen has a great illustration of this concept of providence in the life of the believer—that the God we worship, the God we build our foundation for joy on, He holds our lot. He is providentially ruling our lives. Owen said, “Christ has a banner for His saints, and that is love. All their protection is from His love, and they shall have all the protection His love can give them. This safeguards them from hell, death, all their enemies; whatever presses on them, it must pass through the banner of the love of the Lord Jesus. They have, then, great spiritual safety, which is another ornament or excellency of their communion with Him.”
So imagine that you’re standing at the end of a race, and there’s a banner over the race, over the finish line. You’re standing there, and every single thing in your life comes underneath that banner—good, bad, ugly, in-between, bad days, good days, great days, terrible days, tragedies—everything comes underneath that banner. And for the believer, that banner is the love of the Lord Jesus to us. No matter what has come or will come into your life as a believer, it must pass through Christ’s love for you, and all of that happens within the grasp of God. He holds your lot.
Of course, this truth is even more fully developed in Romans 8:28, “And we know that for those who love God,” for those who build their foundations on God, for those whose joy is in God, for those who love God, “all things work together for good, for those who are called according to His purpose.”
David’s rejoicing that everything in his life was working towards his wonderful inheritance, even though he didn’t know all of the details, but he trusted the omniscient and the omnipotent One. The boundary lines that marked off what God had in store for David were wonderful. David recognized that he had a breathtaking inheritance, springing from the lot that God had for him.
We pursue God, who is both before us and beside us. There’s a concentration of these confident actions that the psalmist takes. “In You I take refuge.” “I say the LORD, ‘You are my Lord.’” “Their drink offerings of blood I will not pour out.” “Yahweh is my chosen portion and my cup.” “I bless Yahweh who gives me counsel.” “I have set the LORD always before me.”
David is very purposeful here about saying, “I’m doing something here! I’m setting the Lord before me; I am deciding to set Him before me.” Setting the Lord before us, that’s being purposeful about the spiritual disciplines in our lives. We’re purposeful about prayer. We do Bible reading on purpose and intentionally, meditation of Scripture on purpose. Worship—time is set aside for worship intentionally, because we seek to cultivate an awareness of His presence, which is the only source of our joy, of the eternal joy that will not fall away.
But David uses interesting language here. He’s talking about—he says, “I’m pursuing the Lord. I have set the Lord always before me,” but then, “because He is at my right hand I will not be shaken.” Well, what is it, David? Is He before you, or is He beside you? I thought you were pursuing Him there. If you’re pursuing Him there, well how is He beside you, or how is that working?
C.S. Lewis, in Mere Christianity, I thought, had a pretty clever way of treating this. He’s talking about the image of a Christian praying. He said, “God is the thing to which he is praying, the goal he is trying to reach. God is also the thing inside him which is pursuing him on, the motive power. God is also the road or bridge along which he is being pushed to that goal. So the whole threefold life of the three-personal Being is actually going on in that ordinary little bedroom where an ordinary man is saying his prayers.”
D.A. Carson notes that “Christ is at our right hand, mediating God to us, but Christ is also at the Father’s right hand, mediating us to God.”
So this pursuit of God is this entering in of this dance of the Trinity, of these three Persons, and because of this, because we’re in this pursuit, we will ultimately not be shaken. When we stumble and fall along this path, when we give ourselves to idols, when we take sips of the drink offerings of blood, when we start to say their names on our lips, what we do is we turn our gaze to the One who was shaken for us so that we would live forever in the Kingdom that can never be shaken, and cast ourselves upon Him. David worships his God who gives him counsel, for he has chosen to set the Lord before his eyes.
III. The Victory of God and the Foundation of our Joy
As we get to the last few verses of this psalm, it escalates even higher. In verses 9-11, we see the victory of God and the foundation of our joy. “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 fulness of joy; at You right hand are pleasures forevermore.”
The psalm ends on an ecstatic note. It started low with him asking for preservation, and it ends as high as you could imagine. It ends with him rejoicing that his flesh would not see corruption, that his soul wouldn’t be abandoned to the realm of death, and the path of pursuing God instead of idols would lead to pleasures everlasting and forevermore.
Here I think it’s helpful to remember Augustine’s comment on interpreting the Old Testament. The Old Testament is like a fully furnished room with furniture in it, but the lights are off in it. You can walk around the room and feel around and, “I think this is a couch. This might be an end table or a coffee table. Maybe this is a chair.” But in the New Testament the lights get turned on and we see with the light and illumination what the Old Testament authors themselves were not able to see.
This especially comes into play with the thought of the flesh dwelling secure, the soul not being abandoned to Sheol, the holy one not seeing corruption, because David ultimately was right in applying this to the life of a believer, but the problem is, how is this going to get fulfilled in the life of sinful people? It says God’s holy one will not see corruption. That’s great, but really, when you get down to it, there was only ever one holy one, and that was the second Person of the Trinity, Jesus, who came and lived an entire, perfect life of obedience on our behalf.
Peter touched on this Acts 2:29-32, in his Pentecost sermon, where he says, “Brothers, I say to you with confidence about the patriarch David, that he both died and was buried, and his tomb is with us to this day. Being therefore a prophet and knowing that God had sworn an oath to him that He would set one of his descendants on his throne, he foresaw and spoke about the resurrection of the Christ, that He was not abandoned to Hades, nor did His flesh seek corruption. This Jesus God raised up, and of that we are all witnesses.”
So Peter is saying yes, David was praying this for himself, and David has this expectation that one of his descendants would eternally reign on his throne, because God promised that to him, but what David didn’t realize and what we know now is that that person this whole psalm was referring to, and how this happens in the life of a believer, is it’s Jesus. “It’s Jesus whom you crucified, but that God raised up.”
So the victory of God—what is it? What did He do? He defeated death. God became a man, and those sorrows of those who run after other gods, He took those sorrows upon Himself. He was called the Man of sorrows, so that His joy would be ours.
There’s an excellent sermon by Jonathan Edwards on Gethsemane. He pictures Jesus in the garden, and He’s praying to His Father, and there’s a massive furnace, and God the Father opens the door to the furnace and He leads Christ to the door of the furnace, and Christ shakes and trembles with fear because what’s inside that furnace is the fullness of God’s wrath. Christ is seeing up close and personal what He’s about to endure for the sake of God’s people.
But Christ went through that; He jumped into that furnace so that through death He destroyed the one who had the power death, that is, the devil. Scripture tells us that the devil never saw it coming.
First Corinthians 2:7-8, and this victory of God, Paul writes, “But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages, for our glory. None of the rulers of this age understood this, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.” There was an intricate plan going on here.
To put a modern twist on one of Jonathan Edwards’ illustrations on this, when Death came to devour Jesus on the cross when he died, it was foolish; it didn’t realize what was really going on, because if it had, it would have stuck its finger in his mouth and swept around because if it did, it would have found a grenade pin lodged in between his teeth. It didn’t check his hands because if it did it would have found a live grenade in the hands of Christ.
Because what happened when Death swallowed Christ, Christ had a live grenade in his hand, and he blew up Death and destroyed him from the inside out. He tricked Death into swallowing Him for the sake of our joy, and one day he will be the one that ultimately swallows Death.
And that’s why Peter goes on to say in Acts 2:24, “God raised Him up, loosing the pains of death, because it was not possible for Him to be held by it.” Death didn’t stand a chance against Christ within him holding that grenade and irreparably damaging him. He irreparably broke death from the inside out, and he proved it by getting out. He got out on the third day, and he came out blazing a path for all those who would be united to him by faith, and securing the bodily resurrection of those who would trust Him.
Jonathan Edwards was also fond of this illustration of, in David and Goliath, after David stones Goliath, he takes Goliath’s own sword, the weapon that Goliath was going to kill David with. David picks up that sword and chops off Goliath’s head with it. He uses the enemy’s own weapon against him, and that’s what Christ did with death. He used his own death to defeat Death. You know, He’s like Jason Bourne—he grabs the weapon out of the guy who’s fighting him and uses it to kill him. He uses death to defeat Death!
So this is the victory of God. God defeated death! Why did He do it? What was the motivation of Christ to get him through this, the motivation when the door of that furnace was opened and he was shaking in fear and trembling and begged for another way besides that. Scripture tells us it was for the joy set before him. Joy motivated Christ to die as the man of sorrows. And Christ, incidentally, he prayed his joys using the psalms. He is our example in doing this.
A.W. Tozer notes, “Holy feeling had an important place in the life of our Lord. ‘For the joy that was set before him he endured the cross and despised the shame.’ He pictured Himself crying, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep, which was lost.’ On the night of his agony he sang a hymn before going out to the Mount of Olives. After His resurrection he sang among his brethren in the great congregation.”
I mentioned earlier that children in the culture in which Jesus grew up sang the psalms. They were familiar with them; they knew them; these were the worship songs that they sang. I can’t help but find myself wondering, when was it that Christ learned the 16th Psalm? When was it that he learned this one, about this joy of not seeing corruption.
I picture in my mind—it’s inside their humble little home in ancient Israel. Joseph is out working and Jesus is maybe three years, and He’s playing on the floor. He has some wooden toys, probably, He’s playing with. Mary’s doing some domestic duties; maybe she’s grinding up some wheat to make some food, and she’s standing there doing it, or she’s washing what few dishes they had, and Jesus is playing on the ground, and His eyes look up at her and He’s tracking around. He sees her as she’s standing there humming.
He’s seeing her, and he’s watching her humming. And she sings some of the lyrics. And he’s watching her lips move, and he’s examining it. He’s hearing her, and he’s learning this song. The very one who’s upholding those vocal chords by the word of his power, who’s enabling her to actually keep breathing—God in the flesh, the incarnate God-Man—he’s learning to sing from his mother.
I can’t help but think that he had that melody in his mind when he was standing there at the post being flogged. Was he singing that melody in his heart and holding onto that? Praying his joys gets him through. Is He [?] through the blood, the sweat, and the horrible darkness of Father’s wrath, for the hope of singing to His Father once again, with many brothers and sisters alongside Him.
Scholars have wondered if the gospel writers were trying to tell us that Christ was actually praying through the entire 22nd Psalm when He was hanging on the cross. That’s because two of His statements from the cross are essentially quotations from the psalm: the first line of the psalm and the last line.
The first line of Psalm 22 is, “My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?” and Christ cried that out on the cross. The last line of Psalm 22 talks about the accomplishment of the Lord. It says, “He has done it.” Jesus said something similar. John tells us that Christ said on the cross, “It is finished.”
So some theorize—this may not be the case—but he may have said, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” and under his breath, because he could hardly talk from the suffering he was going through, he was praying silently through the rest of that psalm. Then he came at the end and belted out, with what strength was left, “It is finished!”
There’s an interesting line in the 22nd psalm. It says, “I will tell of your name to my brothers; in the midst of the congregation I will praise you.” The author of Hebrews specifically connects this to Christ, and that this was a promise Christ was holding onto.
He says, “For it was fitting that he, for whom and by whom all things exist, and bringing many sons to glory, should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering, for he who sanctifies and those who are sanctified all have one source. That is why he is not ashamed to call them brothers, saying, ‘I will tell of your name to my brothers; in the midst of the congregation I will sing your praise.’ And again, ‘I will put my trust in him,’ and again, ‘Behold, I and the children God has given me.’ Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself partook of the same things, so that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery.”
Christ’s motivation to go through the cross, the joy set before him, was that he would reveal the character of his Father to his siblings, and that it would result in worship and in joy, because dead lips cannot praise Yahweh. Dead vocal chords cannot sing His praise. It was for the joy set before him that he endured, so that he could become the joy set before us. Christ knew that as long as we were cut off from the wonder-world of glory—that is, worship of the triune God—as long as we are cut off from that, that God would be less glorified and we would have no joy.
The psalmist thinks about death a little differently than the modern Westerner does. To us one of the worst things about death is the cessation of consciousness, because you’re not even going to be conscious anymore, just the lights are off, that’s it.
But the psalmist, he goes even further than that. He says the worst thing about death is that Sheol does not praise Yahweh. You can’t worship God when you’re dead! God’s people cannot give him worship and enjoy him and give praise to him if they’re not alive!
The psalmist would ask, “How can the grave praise you?” So creation’s very purpose was in jeopardy. There needed to be clapping hands again; there needed to be eyes opening and closing; there needed to be feet dancing and arms hugging and fingers forming chords on musical instruments and vocal chords singing forth. There needed to be life again—there needed to be resurrection. In order to make that happen, in order for the flesh of the believers to dwell secure, in order for their bodies not to see corruption, he endured.
As the soldiers wove together their crown of thorns and pushed it onto his head, he knew that there were seraphim and cherubim forming a crown of glory and honor for him. As a soldier’s cloak was roughly thrown onto his shoulders, the angels were fashioning a garment of light for him, and as the soldiers cruelly took a reed and shoved it into his hand, and then they took that reed and beat him on the head with it, he knew that there was waiting for him in his Father’s throne room a scepter of uprightness and a scepter of righteousness.
And what he accomplished by it? He accomplished the full restoration of worship. “In your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand there are pleasures forevermore.”
This points us to the ultimate hope of seeing God, the beatific vision. John talks about this. First John 3:2-3—he says, “Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared, but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is, and everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure.”
Of course, in Matthew 5, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” Incidentally, that word “blessed”, makarios in Greek, really the most—translators kind of debate with this, but “happy” is really the best translation for that word.
Happy are the pure in heart, for they will see God. That is their joy. They will actually see his face! They will have this beatific vision that they will see him as he is, and because they have this hope of seeing him as he is, they purify themselves; they pursue holiness; they don’t follow the worship practices of idols. They don’t partake in those sorrows, because they have this hope of seeing him as he is, and because they have that hope that they will be transformed into his likeness, they pursue purity, they pursue holiness, because they want to see God.
John Piper, speaking about this vision beatific, this finally beholding God, he writes, “One of the great frustrations of this life is that even when we are granted a glimpse of the glory of God, our capacities for pleasure are so small that we groan at the incongruity between the revelation of heaven and the response of our heart. Therefore the great hope of all the holiest people is not only that we might see the glory of God, but that we might somehow be given a new strength to savor it with infinite satisfaction, not partial delights of this world, but if possible with the very infinited delight of God himself. This highest of all hopes is exactly what Jesus prays will happen to his little flock in the Kingdom.”
Jesus said in John 17:24-26, “Father, I desire that they may also, whom you have given me, be with me where I am, to behold my glory which you have given me in your love, before the foundation of the world. I made known to them your name, and I will make it known, that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.” Jesus asks the Father that we might see his glory, but more than that, he asks that the very love that the Father has for the Son might be in us.
So this worship and this joy that we will experience when we have this beatific vision, when we’re standing there in our glorified bodies—it’s not just a simple continuation of the enjoyment we have of God’s presence here, but it’s actually a new body and a new capacity to actually enjoy God to a capacity and a level that we simply aren’t able to now. Flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God.
Why it matters: how we live it, this victory of God in the foundation of joy. I’m going to be closing with this.
We see this concept at work of this beholding God, and it being our joy no matter what the world is throwing at us, in Acts 7:54-60. This is Stephen after Jesus has ascended to the right hand of the Father, the early church has gotten going. They’ve gotten opposition, and Stephen just preached this sermon to the Jewish leaders, the rulers. They were angry at what they heard.
We read in Acts 7:54-60, “Now when they heard these things they were enraged, and they ground their teeth at him [Stephen]. But he, full of the Holy Spirit, gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. And he said, ‘Behold, I see the heavens open and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God!’ But they cried out with a loud voice and stopped up their ears and rushed together at him. Then they cast him out of the city and stoned him, and the witnesses laid down their garments at the feet of a young man named Saul. As they were stoning Stephen he called out, ‘Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.’ And falling to his knees he cried out with a loud voice, ‘Lord, do not hold this sin against them.’ When he had said this, he fell asleep.”
Of course, we know that after the angels came and carried Stephen to Abraham’s bosom, where his redeemed human nature belonged, and where his heart was set, for at God’s right hand was where his treasure was stored.
But we see here that Stephen actually gets a foretaste of the beatific vision. He actually gets to see the glory of God while he’s still alive, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. Remember, the last time anyone saw Jesus He was ascending and a cloud of God’s glory hid Him from their sight. That was the last time anyone saw Him. They believed He made it up there, but Stephen actually saw it. He saw what happened after that; he saw Him sitting up there, and he knew that Jesus made it! He wanted to tell them, “Look, guys; I see Him—He made it! He did it! He accomplished the victory. He did it! He made the way for us! He’s right there right now; he’s at the right hand of the glory of God.”
And then we also see this vision that Stephen saw—look how it made him act when he was dying. It made him act like Jesus. He was changed by the beholding, as he had a clearer vision of the glory of God, a clearer vision of this joy, he acted differently, and he forgave those who were killing him, just like Christ did.
Can you imagine what a bitter death Stephen would have died if his god was his ministry? If he was saying, “Lord, You filled us with Your Holy Spirit, and I’m going to go out, and I’m going to plant churches, and we’re going to go up—we’re going to take the Mediterranean world by storm. We’re going to push the church forward.”
And then all of a sudden he realizes he’s going to die. They’re getting the stones, they’re pushing him out of the city; he’s not going to get to build a ministry. He’s not going to see any children grow up. This is his last day; he’s going to die.
What kept him from seething in bitterness and from cursing the people that were killing him? It was the foundation that his joy was built on. He didn’t build his foundation on the hope of a successful career, or a ministry, or his family, or his retirement, but it was on the joy that resides at God’s right hand.
All of us, of course, it’s just natural to hope for these things, to hope to die of a ripe old age in bed surrounded by our family, healthy, wealthy, and wise; but it may not be the case. But no matter what the case, we always have to look beyond the present and see what the Lord’s lot is achieving for us.
As that crowd was rushing toward Stephen—remember the banner over the finish line? They were rushing underneath the banner of Christ’s love for Stephen. God held his lot.
And what hope a Christian has! What hope we have that one day—I mean, I’m talking to people in this room right now, people who in this room, who one day, you’re going to see the one who for a little while was made lower than the angels, namely Jesus, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.
We’re going to see him one day, standing at the right hand of the glory of God, and because we have this hope we purify ourselves. We’re going to one day see the face that set his face like flint to go towards Jerusalem and to die for us. That face, this Jesus, we’re not only going to see the form of a man there, a man who is forever going to be in the form of a man for us, because he represents us to the Father, but he is the gateway to the Godhead and to the very glory of God himself.
C.S. Lewis said, “In the end, that face which is the delight or the terror of the universe must be turned upon each one of us, either with one expression or the other, either conferring glory inexpressible or inflicting shame that can never be cured or disguised.”
What hope we have that through Christ, through being united to Him, that God’s gaze to us will only be joy and favor and honor continually, because we’re united to Christ by faith, who is our joy.
Paul elaborates on this hope that David had in 2 Corinthians 5:1, this foundation of joy: “For we know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.”
That’s why Stephen was able to die the way he did. “For in this tent we groan, longing to put on our heavenly dwelling, if indeed by putting it on we may not be found naked. For while we are still in this tent we groan, being burdened—not that we would be unclothed, but that we would be further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who has given us the Spirit as a guarantee.”
The presence of the Holy Spirit in the life of a believer that we enjoy—that’s a down payment that that physical, bodily resurrection is going to happen for us, that we’re going to hide inside the One who hid inside death and destroyed it, and we’re going to come out, be able to worship God, and to enjoy Him forever.
Who has ever cared more about your happiness than the triune God? Do you have a stake in that happiness by being united to Christ by faith? Are you in him? Are you cultivating an awareness of his manifest and joyful presence in your life? Are you going to be there with Christ’s brothers and sisters, where he’s leading them into the presence of God singing joyfully those songs he learned when he was a toddler at the feet of Mary, those psalms of praise to the Lord, enabling us to be in his presence and to worship him?
Our deepest joy and happiness is found in the center of the death, resurrection, and exaltation of Jesus, and to pray over what God has done for us is to pray our joy—to paraphrase Augustine, when we enter in through the wounds of Christ and sing songs of love to our God.
Let’s pray.
Lord, it’s hard to even find words to thank you, to praise you, for who you are to us and for what you’ve done for us, Lord. Lord, I’m thankful you’ve given us the psalms to help give us words to emotionally express this, Lord, and to maneuver this.
Lord, I pray that we would have a clearer vision of the joy set before us, Lord, of the glory that is at your right hand. Lord, may we be build our lives on this unshakable foundation of who you are.
In the name of Jesus we pray. Amen.
Andy Lindgren
