NewCity Orlando Sermons
Summers in the Psalms of Refuge | Psalm 16
Theologian in Residence Michael Allen begins our Summer in the Psalms of Refuge series, preaching from Psalm 16.
Hello everyone. This is Pastor Damien. You're listening to Sermon Audio from New City, orlando. At New City, we believe all of us need all of Jesus for all of life. For more resources, visit our website at newcityorlandocom. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 2:May your word be known and in the faithfulness of our lives may your word be displayed, through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen. Today's scripture comes from Psalm 16. 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.
Speaker 2:The lines have fallen for me in the 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. You may be seated.
Speaker 1:Well, june is here, the temperature has risen, the children are out of school and, as is our custom for, I think, eight years now, we enter into a season of paying special attention to the book of Psalms. Those of you who are here week by week, month by month, year by year, will know that the Psalms are woven into the fabric of our life here at New City. But we give special attention to them in the month of June, and this and in four following weeks this year, we're going to pay attention to what are known as the Psalms of Refuge. And there's good news to be found in paying attention to the Psalms of Refuge. And there's good news to be found in paying attention to the Psalms of Refuge. The good news is that God is a refuge, he is a keeper, he is one who, having placed his name on us, as we've just seen in these baptisms today, he pledges to keep and to preserve and to hold us fast. But there's a terrible truth woven in there, and that is this that we need refuge. My friends, we are in grave and terrible need of refuge, day upon day, year after year. This may not be something that's year after year, this may not be something that's quite as apparent to you or to me, relative to those who've lived long before us or who live in far different places, we can oftentimes forget how much we need a refuge. We can look back to history and see times when this was very obvious. The great historian Edward Gibbon, in his memoirs, writes of how he's the firstborn son in the family and when his younger brother is born a couple years later, his parents name the younger brother Edward, also on the assumption that older brother will die. And then his parents, steadfast and true, continue to name four more younger brothers Edward, assuming that each and every one of them will pass. All the parents here feel a little bit better about how we treat our children relative to that classic naming story.
Speaker 1:We live in a world, perhaps, where death doesn't seem quite so prominent, and yet we live in a world where we go to the hospital side. Just Friday I was at a friend's funeral. Even we in our world, blessed with technology, rich with so much provision, rich with so much provision, even we know the need for refuge because we feel, we feel the pinch of death. We know the experience of vulnerability. We're aware of how often we are threatened physically, financially, relationally, morally, spiritually. We're masters often, though, in finding ways to avoid the threat and to push back the sense of danger, aren't we?
Speaker 1:We can push it back in a number of ways. We can go the way, perhaps, of discipline, knowing that there's a sense of vulnerability and threat and trusting that, as long as we've got the right hack or protocol, the right update or game plan, we'll be fine. We can maintain control and press ahead stoic, like perhaps we go the way of denial and of defensiveness, knowing that there's a threat, knowing there's a looming vulnerability, knowing that real harm is just around the corner, and searching always and only for the right person to blame, to shift the responsibility from myself to them, whoever they may be. We can play the victim as a way of coping with our ongoing pain, can't we? We can also finally give up. We can medicate, we can distract, we can turn to this or that simply as a way of numbing the pain. We can go the way of despair, feeling that there is a looming threat, there is a dark cloud hanging over us and it will not pass, so let's simply numb down the pain and discomfort.
Speaker 1:Well, friends, this day and in this series, we want to offer a different wager, that the Psalms remind us of good news from God Almighty. As the great 20th century thinker Eric Maskell put it, the basic problem of contemporary man is how he can look the facts of his situation honestly in the face, without falling into either cynicism or despair. Man who knows that he's made by God and redeemed by Christ can confront the facts without fear, and that's what we believe. The Psalms of Refuge provide for us a way to fight fear with the faithfulness of our Lord, the faithfulness of the one who made us and still, amid all the struggle, sin and strife, continues to grace us and redeem us in Christ Jesus. And so we want to consider the way in which this psalm and four others point us to God as our refuge. In fact, I was struck, as I was attending a funeral of a friend on Friday, that of all the passages one might turn to for a funeral sermon, my friend had selected this Psalm 16. It would have been handy if I'd not just finished writing a sermon beforehand to suddenly go and hear one on it. But it was selected because this has, through the ages and in the most trying of circumstances, buoyed the faith, sustained the hope, given strength amid the weakness of God's daughters and sons. And if you, like me, this day, find that you are still weak, you are still in need of direction, you are still in need of a north star by which to guide your path, then this psalm offers hope and good news that you can have a refuge.
Speaker 1:First, we see here in this psalm that God is. Here in this psalm, that God is God, is a preserving refuge, he keeps us from corruption. And we see this repeatedly in a number of different lines. Where the psalmist describes the multifaceted care of God, we see at the very beginning the plea preserve me. Verse 5, the cry that God would hold my lot using a term that would often be used in the ancient context, like to rolling dice to see whether something falls this or that way. God holds and steadies what may seem the most dicey of circumstances.
Speaker 1:In verse 8, we're told that we shall not be shaken, we will not be thrown awry, we will not be tipped over. In verse 9, we're told that our flesh, perhaps the greatest sign of our vulnerability, no-transcript. Finally, in verse 10, we see the pledge that you will not let your Holy One see corruption. Friends, here we see repeatedly God declaring the way in which he is a preserving refuge for His sons and daughters. Now we know from this psalm and those that have gone before it that the psalmist himself has struggled through difficult circumstances.
Speaker 1:This is not a promise of an easy life. This is not a pledge of a always comfortable existence. No, the word that we encounter there, in verse 10, is telling you will not let your Holy One see corruption. There is difficulty that has to be journeyed through. There is trial and struggle that has to be faced head on, and there's a world of difference between being corrupted in the press of life and finding that you are grown, you are sustained. You were not only strengthened but you were matured. Through that process, jesus himself would tell us I have come. He says, according to John 10, I have come that you may have life. But that same Jesus in Matthew 10 will also say that the one who lays down his life for my sake will find it.
Speaker 1:Christianity promises life, and life abundant. But life often comes in the way of resurrection after death, doesn't it? And that's why, of all the passages in the Old Testament that might be given attention to, as the early Christians faced disappointment, think of the disappointment, the vulnerability, the sense of danger that they would have faced, not only when Jesus was killed but having been raised and reappeared. Acts 1 tells us he ascends on high and he leaves them, never to offer a hug, never there to be seen to steady their confidence. But he has exited stage right, he's ascended to the very throne room of God. Think of the sense of vulnerability and danger they, like you or I, would feel in that moment, and of all the passages that the apostle Peter turns to in Acts 2, of all the many places in the Old Testament where God offers hope, where God promises deliverance.
Speaker 1:Peter turns to this, to Psalm 16, verse 10, you will not let your Holy One see corruption. A reminder that, yes, jesus struggled, jesus faced brutal suffering, jesus endured so much pain and agony. He was the man of sorrows and yet, for the joy set before him, he endured the cross, despising its shame. And he did so precisely because of this promise that God would not let the Holy One, who bore so much, who journeyed so far, who knew such depths of pain and sorrow, he would not let him see corruption. Peter names this as the great promise of resurrection, life that Jesus, though he would be placed into the ground. He would not remain there so long as to corrupt. He would be raised again in power.
Speaker 1:We see here the promise that, even in the most trying, see here the promise that, even in the most trying, even in the most brutal, even in the most overwhelmingly dark and difficult circumstances, god promises to preserve, that we would not corrupt, we would not dissipate, we would not in any way wither and perish, but that we would be preserved by God, who is our refuge. What freedom does that offer from the fear, the worry, the anxiety that gnaws at our gut and that kickstarts our heart to beat ever so fast, that clouds our busying thoughts, that holds off quiet rest when our head hits the pillow at night? What freedom from fear would we find if we remembered that God promises, wherever we find ourselves, whether on the mountaintop or the valley, whether on firm ground or the chaos and tumult of the waves at sea, that God preserves, that we, our holy ones, we shall not see corruption, even in the face of death. Christian, the first thing we see in Psalm 16 is that the resurrection answers death, so we need not fear decay. There's a second thing we see here, though, as well. We see also that God is a path of life and he's growing us for abundance. God is a path of life, growing us for abundance. If that first image, the image of a refuge, brings to mind the notion of a shelter. Or, as I was reading to my 10-year-old last night from the book Swiss Family Robinson, they are for the first time this bunch of sort of Dutch immigrants. They are faced with a kangaroo and they observe the mother holding the baby there in the pouch, and they repeatedly name that a refuge, a close and tight space wherein one is kept safe, wherein one is not allowed to go off to the side, one's not going to be lost, one's not going to be lost, one's not going to be harmed, one's going to be preserved in the presence of the parent. There we see this image of God keeping us in, sheltering us through the storm. But that's not the only image the psalm invokes.
Speaker 1:The psalm ends with a word about a journey and a path and a way and a road. And God doesn't want you to hide in your closet. God isn't interested in you having merely a bunkering mentality, trying to preserve yourself and your own from whatever the world might throw at you. No, god will preserve you as a refuge and God will be a strong tower and a shelter in the storm. But God also has a way. God has a path, and God wants to call you forth to journey, to walk, to run the race set before you by faith. To run the race set before you by faith.
Speaker 1:We see this repeatedly here in this passage as well. In verse 2, the psalmist says he has no good apart from God. In verse 5, the psalmist names God as his chosen portion and his cup. And there, in verse 11, the psalmist concludes by saying you will show me the path of life. In your presence is fullness of joy, at your right hand are pleasures forevermore. There is a path Our eyes are called to look up and we are called to journey out. It's a path of life. God wants not only to preserve us from death, but he wants us to have life abundant. We're told. Jesus says that is his very mission. And notice the path is a path not merely of sustenance, of being preserved from death. It's a path of joy and gladness, fullness of joy and pleasures forevermore. It's this that leads Sarah Coakley to say that psalms such as this remind us of how very much we need not only to have our love intensified for God, our delight in him intensified, but we need it to be redirected. We oftentimes can think that as long as we're kept from threats without, all will be well. But, friends, we need to acknowledge this.
Speaker 1:Psalm calls us to confess that the status quo is not acceptable. We could say with St Augustine of Hippo who in the very first book of his confessions he confessed the house of my soul, it's too small for you. Enlarge it, lord. It's in ruins, restore it. Enlarge it, lord. It's in ruins, restore it.
Speaker 1:Or we could say with the Apostle Paul writing to the Romans in the beginning of that 12th chapter. He calls us to the giving of our lives as living sacrifices of worship to God. And he says to do that, you need to not be conformed to the pattern of this world. You need to be preserved from the death-dealing corruption of life pressing in from all around you. But he doesn't just say you need to throw the spiritual stiff arm to the corrupting influences of them, to the pressing trials from without. Paul goes on to say you need to be transformed by the renewing of your mind so that you might be able to discern what is true and good and perfect what's acceptable to God. Paul knows the status quo is not acceptable.
Speaker 1:Paul confesses there not only that we need to be preserved from corrupting influence, from circumstances that lead us to grow in bitterness, from arrogance, pride, from despair, but we also need we need to be changed, we need to be grown, we need to be transformed. We need to be grown, we need to be transformed. We need, as Augustine puts it, our hearts enlarged. And don't we find so often that it's precisely when other things are being taken away that our heart for God, our love and zeal for our Lord is grown the most? There are so many stories. We could turn to so many episodes from history.
Speaker 1:You perhaps know the famous line from CS Lewis's sermon the Weight of Glory, given at Oxford University, in the chapel there where he spoke of how our desires are such that we're far too easily pleased. He invokes the image of a child who, spurning the holiday at the sea, is content with mud pies. He says we are like that child, we are far too easily pleased. And the power of Lewis's image there is all the more striking when you consider where he preached that sermon St Mary's University Chapel in Oxford, the very place where, centuries before Thomas Cranmer, the great reformer in England, had stood and Cranmer, who'd given his life over decades to serve Christ, to minister to the church in England and who in his final years faced a brutal, bloody Mary on the throne who was executing faithful pastors left and right, cranmer himself had cowered.
Speaker 1:He sought to preserve his own life. He sought to take refuge by being unfaithful and he signed a recantation of his faith and his life was spared that day. But he remained sidelined and marginalized and eventually he was still to be put to death. And in that experience of having his position as the greatest pastor, the Archbishop of Canterbury in England, of having all power and authority and honor and respect taken from him, in the face of losing his very life, his heart was enlarged and I can't say that he didn't die. But I can tell you, if you go there, if you go to that chapel, you can see where he truly lived. Because Cranmer died a Christian death. He went to that pulpit where Lewis would speak of being far too easily pleased, and Cranmer showed that he wasn't. He insisted on repenting of his recantation, of declaring his faith in Jesus, of marching out into the street where the fire was already lit and before he was to be thrown in and burnt to death, he put the very hand by which he'd written his recantation in the fire, claiming that it ought to be burnt before the rest of him.
Speaker 1:Now, huge stories of momentous faith can be striking, but can't all of us see that it's so often in the most challenging circumstances that our hearts are enlarged, that we see not only that God preserves us, whether he does or doesn't take us from the circumstance, but we see always and everywhere that he transforms us, that he transfigures us, so that we can enjoy more of his goodness and we can experience his glory all the more. I think of my own family history, the stories I would hear my parents tell of how their marriage was never so close as when a flood destroyed the house and took everything they owned, or of my childhood, when our faith and our prayerful reliance on God and God alone was never so obvious as when I was in elementary school and my father had emergency brain surgery and we didn't know if he was to survive and we faced a half year of recovery. And I think of Any number of stories since. Where it's the dicey circumstances, it's the challenging moments, it's when the settled and comfortable and mundane comforts of life, the things we rely on, the things we coast on when they're taken away or, at the very least, threatened. That we see God's faithfulness, and not only his faithfulness to preserve us, but his grace in giving of his fullness. He doesn't want us to be miserable folks moping on another day. He longs to fill us with his very joy, and some of you have experiences like that. You could turn to those seated in front or beside you. We know what it is to have the joy of a storm party as you wait, wondering if the power's going to go, if there's going to be any damage, and yet remarkable memories are made in those places. And yet remarkable memories are made in those places. We know what it is to face the looming answer of a test result or to hear what's to come when the surgeon comes out from that operating room. And we know what it is to have a brother, a sister who can point us to the goodness of the Lord, to grow our hearts so that we're freed to know that we can find fullness of joy and pleasure forevermore, whatsoever the result might be.
Speaker 1:What we see in this psalm is that our God is a preserving refuge. Yes, what we see in this psalm is that our God is a preserving refuge. Yes, Our God is also one who has a path of life for us. He longs to keep you from corruption and guard you from that which would threaten, but he's committed to growing you for nothing less than abundance and fullness. This and all the passages we give ourselves to over the next month really are the proof of what Eric Maskell said. If the real problem, the basic problem of contemporary man is how he can look the facts of his situation honestly in the face, without falling into either cynicism or despair, then the answer, the biblical answer, the Christian answer, the answer Jesus' resurrection in Psalm 1610 gives us, is that, men and women who know that they're made by God and they're redeemed by Christ, we can confront the facts without fear. And this psalm? It doesn't flinch, it doesn't downplay, it doesn't go defensive, it names the diciest of circumstance.
Speaker 1:Notice the context Verse 7, the psalmist speaks of his experience in the night. Verse 10, he speaks of Sheol, the grave. The night then. And there was an experience markedly different from most of us in this time and place. The night then, and there was a context where there is no illumination. The night then and there was a context where there is no illumination there is all manner of vulnerability. One doesn't know if there's going to be an attack from without, one doesn't know what is going on around you. The night represents utter vulnerability.
Speaker 1:Sheol is the simplest biblical term for the grave. It's not heaven, it's not hell, it's simply those of us who have died and have gone into the earth. It represents a seeming end, the idea that there's not an obvious tomorrow, that there's not an obvious tomorrow, a sense of finality and of closure. And so here we have a psalm that doesn't flinch at naming our circumstance darkness and death. And darkness does represent that feeling that you get in your gut, that sense of vulnerability that prompts the anxious thoughts to run. And death does remind all of us of our limits and of where we all go. And yet this psalm reminds us. This psalm reminds us that darkness and death are not true limits, for God, in his limitless goodness, is present. He is present as light in the darkness and life in the face of death. He is present to his daughters and his sons. He is present in the valley as well as on the mountaintop.
Speaker 1:There are three responses here we only have time for one. I'm very conscious, it's Family Worship Sunday and I'm a parent. So there are three responses the psalm offers. We're going to just look at one briefly. In verse 7, the psalmist speaks of blessing the Lord. And we have blessed God and we will bless God. We see the psalmist then, in verse 8, says he will set the Lord always before him. And then in the immediately following verse the psalmist rejoices. We have much to rejoice in. But I want to consider that second response briefly as we close A reminder to set the Lord always before us, to be mindful of God, to fear the Lord above all things. You've already heard.
Speaker 1:At the beginning of the service, ryan mentioned the All of Life Guide. The All of Life Guide is meant to help you be more alert to what God is doing in your life and what God might have for you in the next stage, to what you might repent of, to what you might lean into by faith. And there's much there. But this is the door to it, the entryway, the beginning of the all of life guide which you can grab out there before you sign up to help in City Kids. The All of Life Guide begins by naming the whole process as a prayerful journey of examination.
Speaker 1:It begins with a page that speaks of the grand examine, a prayerful attentiveness to the presence of God in one's life. Attentiveness to the presence of God in one's life and there, in calling you into that journey, in beckoning you into that journey of attentiveness, it quotes Psalm 16.8. I'll set the Lord always before me. Now we're to do that every day. We're to pray without ceasing. The fear of the Lord is the beginning, not just the first thing, of the wise life, but the foundation, always and everywhere, of the wise life. But at certain points we want to give special attention to setting the Lord before us If we want to have any hope of remembering him in the midst of the chaos and the difficulty. And we beckon you and invite you if you want to always hold the Lord before you when you feel that you need a refuge, if you want to always be attentive to the Lord above you when you have a desire for greater abundance, if those are aches and desires and yearnings of your heart, or, put it otherwise, if those are great needs that you can't get anywhere else, and if you want that to be an intuitive response in the face of threat and vulnerability in the context of death and failure, then we want to give ourselves intentionally to seasonal exercises, like taking up that all of life guide, seeking for a season to be especially focused on putting the Lord before us, being uniquely alert to his presence in our midst. Uniquely alert to his presence in our midst.
Speaker 1:I'm reminded of a story from 1952. Florence Chadwick was the first woman to have swum across the English Channel and back. Remarkable athlete, and she in that year 1952, went out to Southern California to be the first to swim from Catalina Island to the mainland by LA. It's a 22-mile stretch, it's a wee bit rockier and more chaotic than the English Channel and on that day when she would swim for approximately 15 hours, it was thick with fog and it was remarkably wet. She could see almost nothing and she swam, and she swam and she pressed on and she went mile after mile, not being able to see hardly beyond the few feet in front of her, and finally, after 15 hours, she gave up. And finally, after 15 hours, she gave up and as she was brought in, her heart caved when she learned that she'd been but half a mile to the shore. She'd almost made it, she said later that day. She said I can't blame anyone else, I'm the one who asked to be brought in. But I think if I'd been able to see where I was going and to see how close I was, I would have finished Two months later on a clear day with the sun shining above her. She finished the 22-mile swim.
Speaker 1:We face fog, the rains can feel so thick, and God wants to offer hope, not by giving you ease, not by promising comfort, not by pledging that the difficulty will dissipate, but by pledging that you won't dissipate and you won't be corrupted. And he will not only preserve you as your refuge, he himself will grow you for abundant life in him and fill you with joy that is full, and pleasure that's evermore. And so you, you like me, you like Florence, you like Thomas Cranmer, you are called to set the Lord always before you. Let's do so prayerfully. Now, father, you alone have the words of life.
Speaker 1:Where else might we turn? We confess we have turned. We do turn to so many other places. We turn to our strength and competency, believing that we can plow through the trial. We turn to blame, believing if we can criticize others, our vulnerability won't matter so much. We turn to so many distractions to numb our sense of vulnerability, and still you are there.
Speaker 1:We thank you that you are the God, who has placed your name upon us in our baptism, who has promised your steadfast love in your covenant and who now has skin in the game, because you have sent your very son and he has journeyed into the valley of the shadow of death and he has borne our sin and sorrow and all the death that was experienced on that brutal cross. That was experienced on that brutal cross, and you have raised him to life glorious and immortal, and promised that we too shall share in that fullness of joy, that pleasure, evermore, that path of life. Grant us your hope. We pray and help us to set you always before us. This we ask in the strong and risen name of Jesus, amen.
Speaker 1:Well, as is our custom, we want to take a couple minutes, prayerfully and personally, to respond to God's word, to be not only hearers but doers of the word. And while, hopefully, all of us will go and turn our attention to the all of life guide later, here and now I want to invite you to begin by asking one simple question where, this day and this weekend, have you not set the lord always before you. Where is it that you've been distracted? Where is it that you've not been attentive? Where is it that you've been distracted? Where is it that you've not been attentive? Where is it that you can ask the Lord, through his word, to guide you, to be alert and aware to his presence, his presence in difficulty and his presence in success, his presence when the sun shines and when it's dark and cloudy. Take just a couple moments and prayerfully consider that.