Three Realizations of True Happiness | Psalm 16

Psalm 16  |  Cody Hale 

Transcript

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If you have your Bibles, turn with me to Psalm 16. Psalm 16. In the second week of our vision series. So today is Enjoy God Sunday. We're going to talk entirely about what it is that we mean when we say, Enjoy God. We'll be in Psalm 16, we'll read the whole Psalm together. These are David's words. God's word says in 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 in 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. 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. Let's pray to the Lord together. Father, this morning we are gathered here together. Because Lord, as your people, we want to enjoy you together. Lord, you have given us your word. You have given us your promises. And today, oh Lord, we come to stand on them, to hear them, to sit under them. Lord, take the truth of your word, penetrate our hearts, take the truth of your word and lift our spirits as high as they can go. Some come in broken and need you to reassemble their heart and faith. Lord, would you do that today? Some come in and they're encouraged. Lord, would you fan their flames? Some come in and they're in sin. Would you convict them of their sin? Lord, all of us come desperate. Desperate to hear you. Desperate to be with you. Would you show your face? We ask these things now in Jesus' name. Amen. You may be deceated. Several years ago, I had the opportunity to preach for five days in the townships of South Africa, in one of the townships of South Africa. The townships are really a holdover from the segregated apartheid government that fell in the early 90s. And the living conditions there are really deplorable. For just miles and miles and miles, all you can see are just one shack after another, this huge shanty town. The people are walking through broken sewage pipes, children are playing by huge heaps of garbage. The typhus and HIV and AIDS are running completely rampant. In one of these corrugated 10 homes, you could have 10, 12, 15 people, multiple generations of one family all living there together. On one particular day, we were kind of going from house to house, and we were sharing the good news about Jesus, and we were telling our story, and we were listening to them as they would share their stories with us. And you're going, and it's very common for you to sit across the table from someone, and they're obviously just emaciated with HIV or with typhus. Most of the houses, you'll notice there's just dirt around them, or there's garbage. There's often barbarous, I'd say often that Africa is a continent behind a fence. It's just a really common thing there. So we've gone to house after house after house. They've all kind of been very similar experiences, beautiful people, wonderful stories, but really just a painful, painful existence in a lot of ways. But we come to this one shanty. I wish I had a picture to show you. And it's a house just like these because it's what they could afford. It's what they had. But it was unlike the others in that it was clean and kept. The ground had been swept. The floor had been swept. There was no garbage around. All of it had been put picked up. And out front, there wasn't dirt like this. There was vegetation. There had been a planted garden, and there they were growing just some of the most beautiful cabbages and vegetables that you've ever seen. And then around the exterior of the house, there were flowers, flowers that obviously were the pride and joy of the people that lived there. And we go and we and we're talking to this lady, and the only way that I know to describe her is just to say that she was incandescent. She was just beaming, right? She was just beaming. And there are children and they're playing in the background, and she's telling and they're laughing and telling the stories about, and she she knows the Lord, right? And it struck me while we were there. And here we are, and we're in a place that feels like death. But this, her house, it was a place of life. Here in an ocean of what feels like darkness, we're people of light. That's a really good picture of who we're to be as followers of Jesus. We live in a broken world, in a cursed world. We live in a world that is filled with death. But surrounded by death, our churches are meant to be places of life. Surrounded by darkness. We as Christians are meant to be people of light. That we are those in whom there is a deep, abiding joy and a steady hope. Well, this is what David is really longing for in Psalm 16. If you look at Psalm 16, 9, I think it's safe to say that this is really the dream that all of us have for our lives. David says, Therefore, my heart is glad, my whole being rejoices, my flesh dwells secure. My heart, this is the inner man, in my inner man I am filled with joy. In my inner man, in my inner person, I am filled with peace. My flesh, this is his outer man, my flesh, my external circumstances dwell secure. There is no threat impending and pushing in around me. So because there is peace in my inner man, and peace and security in my outer man, now my whole being rejoices in the totality of who I am because of the goodness that is in my life. That's the dream that you have, isn't it? That you'd have peace in your inner man, that you'd have security in your outer man, so that your life could be characterized by rejoicing. That's the dream that you have for your kids. That's the dream that you have for your grandkids. That's the dream that we have for our church. This is the dream that David had for his life. But did you know David would never know this dream realized in his life? We won't either, will we? We're waiting for this dream to be realized. We're waiting to know what it's like to have total peace interior, total security exterior, so that the entirety of who we are is rejoicing in the Lord. But what I love about this is building up to it, David going through a hard time in his life, come to some comes to some realizations that you can have in the here and now, in the intermediate, in the waiting time, so that you can possess true happiness while you wait. I want us to see some of those same realizations together this morning. The first realization that David comes to is he says, I know I have what I need. I have what I need. Victor Frankel was a Jewish psychiatrist that survived the Holocaust. And he reflects back on his experiences in the Holocaust with the insight that's provided by his expertise in psychiatry. And he says that when he thinks back, what he recognizes is that those who suffer most very often were not those with the worst health or the least amount of food. That those who suffered most in the concentration camps were those who desperately needed to be happy. He said that they would think to themselves that tomorrow, tomorrow the allies will come, tomorrow the camp will be delivered, and tomorrow would come, and it would only bring more misery, and then another week and another week, and so they would be left in despair. They would think to themselves, if I could only have another bite of food, if I could just have something to eat, if I could have more bread, and said one day they would get more bread, only to discover that they were still hungry and it would only confound and compound their misery. They would think to themselves, they would think to themselves, if if only I didn't have to work today, if only I could just get out of the work, then I would be happy, but they would have a day without work and misery would still press in. He said, but I did discover something else that was profound. I discovered that those who were able to endure best were not the ones with the most food. The ones who were able to endure best were not those that had the best health and the strongest bodies. Those who were able to endure best were those who were able to find meaning and significance, even though they were living in a concentration camp. That they didn't sit and think, How can I be happy today? Rather, they thought, how can I help other people around me be able to persevere and make it one more day? They focused on their faith in God and their relationship with Him. They they focused on how to count others more significant than themselves and they focused on loving others more than themselves. And he said, What I what I realized is that if you focus on happiness, it never comes. But if you focus on significance, if you focus on purpose, if you focus on meaning, if you focus on giving of yourself, then happiness ensues. And this is where this quote comes in that happiness cannot be pursued, it must ensue. That if we make our lives only about the pursuit of doing what is going to make us happiness, happiness is going to be fleeting. Happiness is going to be elusive. But if instead, if instead we find purpose and meaning and give our lives away, then very often, very often happiness becomes the byproduct. And so we find here in Psalm 16 that David's in a hard time. We know that he's in a hard time because he prays, preserve me. That's not a prayer that you pray at the top of the mountain. That's not the prayer that you pray when you have plenty to eat. That's not the prayer that you play, pray when your health is good. That's not the prayer that you pray when everything is lining up just the way that you want to. That's the prayer that you pray when you're desperate. That's the prayer that you pray when you think you might be facing death. That's the prayer that you pray when you have the diagnosis. That's the prayer that David's praying when he's on the run. That's the prayer that you pray when your son deposes you. That's the prayer that you think when you are walking through the valley of the shadow of death. Preserve me, oh God. And as he prays this prayer in a difficult circumstance and during a hard life, he begins to wrestle with one of the difficult questions, the question, one of the questions that all of us have to wrestle with. What is it that I need in order to be happy? What is it that I need in order to be happy? Because David comes to the same conclusion that Frankel comes to. That the more it is that you need to be happy, the less happy ultimately you will be. I want you to think about all the things that our world and culture tells us we need in order to be happy. We're told that we need to be able to have a trauma-free childhood. Good luck with that, right? Good luck with that. Sometimes I tell my kids, you just write down what I just said and I'll sign it and you can hand it to your counselor later on in life, right? It's hard. We're told that we need a problem-free marriage. Good luck with that. We need purpose in our work. We need to be able to work at something that we're passionate about. We we need to have plenty of margin to be able to have passion projects and hobbies that we find fulfilling. We need to have exceptional children. We need to have a dream wedding. We need to have an exotic honeymoon. We need to be able to quickly move from our starter home and into the home of our dreams. We need to make sure that we have vacations that are Instagram worthy. And if you have to have all of that in order to be happy, can I just tell you the truth? You're not going to be happy. You're not going to be happy. Even if you manage to get it all, even if you manage to attain every dream and every goal that you've ever set for yourself, you'll worry all of your life about losing it. And if you don't get it, you'll feel like you were cheated. You'll feel like you are a victim of your own life. You'll feel like God gave you the short end of the stick. So here's David, and he's contemplating what is it that I need in order to be happy. And he comes to a conclusion that most fundamentally, most fundamentally, he will not regard himself as a person of need. Most fundamentally, he will not think of himself as being filled with have nots. Rather, he will think of himself most fundamentally as being a person of haves. There's a couple of ways that he sees this. The first thing is he focuses on what he has. You'll see that in verse 2. He says, I say to the Lord, You are my Lord, and I have no good apart from you. In other words, this is the conclusion that David arrives at. David arrives at the conclusion that he doesn't need all the gifts of life. He doesn't need all the good things that God can give him. He doesn't need all the things that are in doing it. There's nothing wrong with any of those things. If you have them, you should praise the Lord for them. But he doesn't fundamentally need all of those things because guess what he has? He has actually the giver of all of those things. It says he has the giver of every good thing in his life. He doesn't have to go on needing all of the good things in life in order to be happy because he knows that whatever it is that he needs, he already has secured in the one whom he has. You'll notice that he uses the word Lord twice in verse 2, but it's actually two different names of God that are being utilized there. The first one, if you look in your Bible, is probably written in all caps. If you ever read the Old Testament and you notice the word Lord is written in all caps, that means it's not actually the word Lord that was in the Hebrew. It's the word Yahweh, Yahweh. But the Hebrew people so revered the name Yahweh that they wouldn't actually say it out loud. They would just say Jehovah. And so they would write it out as Lord in all caps to or the translators write it out in all caps to help us understand. Now, what is the name Yahweh? What's the significance of that name? Well, that's the covenant name of God, isn't it? That's the name that God gives himself to his. That's the God of Jacob, of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. That's the God of the promises. That's the God that is devoted to his people through loving kindness. That's the God that has upheld the covenant. That's the God, the God that is loyal. That is the God that is good. That is the God that is personally known, that has delivered them and given them all the gifts that they have. Then notice the next Lord. The word translated there is the name of God that we know as Adonai. Adonai. Now, what's the significance of the name Adonai? What does Adonai teach us about? It teaches us about the sovereignty of God. That's that's God's name as the king and the ruler of the universe, the one who brings all circumstances together, the one who reigns and before whom every king and every president and every Congress will bow down and declare him as Lord. He is the one that makes sure that everything that he wants to be done is done. He's the one against whom his will can never be thwarted. Now think about how this fits together in David's mind. On one hand, God is for him, God is with him, God has made promises to him, God has given gifts to him. On the other hand, God is in charge of everything. God is ruling over it all, God is fitting it all together. Do you see how these fit together for his joy in the middle? That's what he's recognizing is that the God that is for him is at the same time the God that is ruling over everything, which means that everything that happens in his life, even in a circumstance that was different than he wishes that it was, even though he wishes that he didn't have to pray the prayer, preserve me. Nobody does. Even though he's in the midst of a circumstance that he wishes was different than he was, what he can have confidence is is that because the God that is for him is the God that is ruling over those circumstances, that all of this is going to ultimately work together for his good, for his deliverance, and for the glory of his God. So in the Lord, in the Lord, he already has what he needs. But it's not just significant about what he has, but it's also significant about who has him. Verse 5 The Lord is my chosen portion and my cup. You hold my lot. So this is actually where much of the song that we just sang comes from. What does it mean that the Lord is my chosen portion and my cup? What he's saying there is, I don't need another T-bone steak. T bone steaks are awesome, morally neutral, gifts from the Lord. I don't need a nice filet mignon. What I've been satisfied by is the Lord. I'm completely satisfied in him. I don't need another cup of water. I don't need a drink of the sweetest wine because what I have, what I have, is the Lord. I have in him the giver of all of these things. So it's a way for him to say that there is the reality I live in every day, which is the food that I eat, the uh water that I drink. That's the reality that I live in in every day. If I didn't eat food and I didn't drink water, I would die. But there is an ultimate and greater reality, and the ultimate and greater reality is the source of all of these things. And so what he is rightly recognizing is that in the Lord he has all that he needs. And so then he says something profound. He says, You hold my lot. We actually still use this kind of language today. The word lot is the way we often use the word fate. You hold my fate in your hands. The picture is very often our lives just feel random, don't they? Probably at this point in David's life, his suffering felt random. It feels like the Lord is up there and he's playing Yahtzee, right? And you're hoping that the dice fall on double sixes, but very often it just feels like it falls on snake eyes, right? And so you're up there and you're like, come on, give me some sixes, give me some sixes, and it's like, oh, snake eyes again, right? And everything in your life feels random. It feels like the Lord is just casting dice. But he says, No, no, no, no. What I recognize, what I recognize is in the circumstances of my life, in the hardships of my life, in the successes of my life, in the victories of my life, that all of them are held in the hand of the Lord. That he is sovereign over my life. He is sovereign over whether the dice fall on sixes or the dice fall, or the dice fall on snake eyes. So it's a way for him to recognize, again, that the Lord is for him, the Lord is sovereign over all things, and the Lord is directing all of these things toward his good and for his glory. This is a good time for us to stop for just a second, I think, and define happiness. Happiness can be this kind of squishy thing that makes it really uncomfortable for us to even talk about in church, right? Because it's kind of been hijacked by the world. I think it's a term we ought to redeem in the church. It's a term that we find, we find gladness, rejoicing, satisfaction, pleasure, happy throughout the scriptures. It's a word that we ought to redeem, but we need to make sure that we're being honest about what we're talking about. So, what do I mean when I talk about the word happy in a Christian context? What I mean by happy is that happiness is resting in the ultimate reality, despite my present reality. It's resting in the ultimate reality. What's the ultimate reality? God is good, God is for me, God is sovereign, he's over everything, so I know he's directing everything toward my good. I know that he's directing everything toward his glory. This is the ultimate reality, despite what my present reality may be trying to convince me of. My present reality may be joblessness, my present reality may be a heartache, my present reality might be a divorce, my present reality might be a diagnosis, my present reality might be anything other than what I wish it was. And I can't seem to find any joy or any happiness in that. So where do I find happiness? What do we mean by enjoying God? We mean resting in the ultimate reality despite the present reality. To put it in David's terms, is to begin regarding yourself fundamentally, not as a person of need, not as a person of have nots, but as a person of haves. Think about the way that our culture teaches us, right? Our culture, you guys will spare, you'll learn soon enough that I cannot draw. This is a teacup, in case you don't know. Our culture tries to convince us that we're all little teacups, right? We're little cups of need that need to be filled up. And that basically our levels are kind of almost always at the bottom. Well, if you live any kind of real actual life, right? Your level always kind of fills at the bottom. And so what do you have to have? Well, you have to have a wife or a husband that's filling up your cup, that's constantly making a deposit. Otherwise, you're gonna just be depleted and you're gonna run out. And then, man, you really need some kids. You need good and exceptional kids, kids that are well-rounded, the right kinds of kids, that they can make deposits, that notice you and appreciate you. And well, you you need work. You need not just any work, you need a job that provides job satisfaction and lets you work in your passions and lets you have a sense of significance and meaning and purpose. And then, well, of course, you gotta have time for the girls and the guys, you gotta be able to play a little golf, right? Like you need some hobbies that you can invest your all of these things are awesome, right? All of these things are awesome. But what's the problem with this picture, y'all? Every single one of these things, you can lose them in a car accident. Does that mean that you have no chance at happiness anymore? Does that mean that you no longer have any chance of a significant and meaningful life? Does that mean that your life ceases to have purpose and mat and meaning to it? Only if you see it through the eyes of our culture, only if you see yourself fundamentally as a person of need. But think about how David sees himself. One day I'm gonna turn to Philippians chapter four. I'm gonna show you that Paul sees himself the same way. David doesn't see himself as an empty cup that needs to be filled. David sees himself as a full cup that is spilling over in the overflow of his relationship with God so that it begins to pour out into everything else in his life. He doesn't regard himself as being without, he regards himself as already being full. He regards himself as already having all the good things from the Lord, not in gifts, but in the giver himself. So guess what happens? Well, now he may get married. And he got married a lot, actually. And guess what? Your wife isn't the one that has to fill your cup. Your wife becomes a sweetener for you to enjoy your life. Now, if you don't have a wife or you don't have a husband, that doesn't mean you can't be happy. That's what the culture seems to communicate. That doesn't mean that at all. Because in the Lord, in the Lord, you have everything that you need. Now you can have kids, and guess what? They don't have to bear the weight of trying to make you happy. They don't have to bear the weight of trying to give you something that you need from them. You can just love them, you can just enjoy them because they are sweet flavor to life. And if you don't have kids, if if that's not possible for you, that doesn't mean that you're condemned to a life of loneliness and misery. It just means it just means that that particular flavor is not going to be a part of your life. You can still have significance, you can still have meaning. Work is the same way, right? Yeah, I hope that all of you get to work in a job that you're passionate about. I hope that all of you get to go to work every day to do something that's significant. But can I just tell you that's not most people? And that doesn't mean there's no dignity in work. That just means that your work is not responsible for your happiness. Your work is not the source of your happiness. If you get it, it sweetens life. If you don't have meaningful work and you feel like you go to a dead end job every day, you can go to that dead end job with your cup already full. You're not gonna be less full than other people. Your cup is already full because you have the giver. So you can go and not be miserable and come home and not be a grump, and you can serve your family, and you can serve your church, you can serve your community to do a job that otherwise people would hate, and you can do it with joy because your cup is already full. You are not fundamentally a person in need. I wonder if that's how you see yourself. This morning, do you can you with David say that in God I have all that I need? Well, if you can, you're beginning to enjoy God in the way that He's meant to be enjoyed. David comes to the realization that I have what I need, and then he comes to the realization that I know where I belong. I know where I belong. In 1845, Sir John Franklin went on in pursuit of the Northwest Passage. And so he assembled the dream team of mariners, people that were experienced seamen. He went and he had a fleet of state-of-the-art ships for the time. He had wealthy backers that provided him every resource and then some that he could possibly want. He had every provision that he could possibly need. And so they get on the expedition and they go, and you know what happens? They vanish. It seems like they sell off the face of the earth. Years later, the British would send a search team to try to go and investigate exactly what took place and where uh where Franklin's expedition went wrong. And what they discovered is that Franklin died because he was where he did not belong. That in other words, he went into the Arctic, and the Inuit tribe had survived there and flourished there for thousands of generations, came and they tried to tell him that he was eating the wrong food. They tried to tell him that he was wearing the wrong kinds of clothes, but he was determined that he was going to be an English gentleman. And he was gonna dress in English gentleman clothes, and he was gonna drink English gentleman tea and eat English gentleman food. But he wasn't in England. He was in the Arctic and he froze to death, and his crew froze to death. He died because he was where he did not belong, and very often the reason that we feel like we're dying, the reason that we feel like we're languishing is because we don't feel like we are where we belong. So much of the pursuit of happiness can be summarized as the pursuit of the people to whom we belong and the place where we belong. And so here is David, and David is stirring himself up by reminding himself that he has these things, that he remembers that he belongs to a people. You find yourself in a situation like David is, and you find that your circumstances are not what you wish they were, your life is not what you wish it was, you're not facing what you wish that you were facing. You know what you have to have to be able to make it? You have to have solid joys, solid joys, those things that are not circumstantial, those things that don't ebb and flow with time, those things that are unchangeable, those things that are rock solid. That's what David is doing when he reminds himself here in verse 3. He says, As for the saints in the land, they are the excellent line, excellent ones, in whom is all my delight. In David's mind, he's not committing idolatry by saying, All of my delight are in the people of God. He's can those things are completely connected in his mind, that he delights in the saints of God because they remind him of God. They teach him about God, they point him to God, that he recognizes that in the saints he has a people to whom he belongs. See, for David, it's quite likely that he's on the run from Saul, he hiding in the cave, sleeping in the dirt. It could be that his son Absalom at this point in his life has deposed him and he's on the run from Absalom, that much of Jerusalem feels like it's set against him. But then he remembers. He remembers that there are saints in the land, that there is still a righteous remnant. There are still people there that love him and are for him and support him. He has people that he belongs with. In fact, the word saint there, I think, is very purposeful, isn't it? What does a saint represent in the scripture? The saints are the chosen people of God, aren't they? They are the people on whom the promises of God rest. They are the ones that have received from God his blessings. They are the ones that are assured his deliverance and assured his salvation. They are the one to whom the Messiah is going to be sent. And so here he is, and he's bringing it in his mind. And he's looking around. And notice it's the saints in the land. Who did God promise the land to? To Abraham. He made promises to Abraham, didn't he? He made promises to Abraham that he was going to bring him into the land of Canaan, he was going to give it to his descendants, he was going to multiply his descendants through all the to be more numerous than the stars of the sky. And then it seems like everybody and their brother rose up against Abraham's people, Pharaoh, and on down the list, to try to stop that. But here they were, thousands of years later. And David is able to remember back that God made a promise to Abraham, and the fact that they are in the land and there are saints in the land is emblematic and proof and vindication that God has kept his word to Abraham. Well, who else did God make a promise to? David, right? He told David, I'm gonna establish your throne, and your throne will always endure across every generation. And one of the seed, one of your sons, will sit upon that throne and reign over the earth. Didn't look like that promise was doing so well at the moment. Didn't seem like that one was going so hot. Here's David, and he's able to remember because he is a part of a people, because he's a part of a heritage, because he has a legacy of seeing the promises of God upheld. If God kept his word to Abraham, God's gonna keep his word to me. And so even though it looks like it's falling apart, even though it looks like I'm coming apart, even though it feels like nothing is going right, I can trust God kept his word to Abraham. God is gonna keep his word to me. You know that's one of the reasons that we gather together every week, right? That's one of the reasons that we gather together every week. That's why you should come, whether you feel strong or you feel weak. Sometimes we come in here and we come in here limping, don't we? I know I do. I come in here and it feels like you've had a week filled with Mondays, right? And it takes everything that you've got just to kind of scratch yourself through the door, right? You know what we need in those moments? You know what you need in the moment that you get your cancer diagnosis? You need to look across the sanctuary and you need to see another brother or sister that is raising their hands, that has already overcome cancer or is suffering with it right then, and to see that the Lord has sustained them. You you feel lonely? You need to come in and be reminded among the saints of God that you are not by yourself and you are not resting in these promises aimlessly, that it has been substantiated. Look at the people around you. You you lose your job. You need to come in and you need to see a brother standing on the front row with his hands lifted up to the sky, singing to the top of his lungs, who you know walked through the exact same thing two years ago, and yet the Lord has been faithful to provide for him. That sometimes, brothers and sisters, we come together to sing praise, and sometimes we come together to borrow praise from one another. We limp in here to be reminded that we belong to a people, and we belong to a people because we belong to a God, and that God is good, and that God is serving us, and that God is ministering to us, and that God is delivering us. Sometimes, sometimes we enjoy God with one another, and sometimes we enjoy God for one another and through one another. David remembers that he belongs to a people, and he remembers that he belongs in a place. If you think about it, throughout the scriptures, there's a really robust theology of place that takes that's that you find almost said that takes place throughout the the Bible. We saw last week in Genesis 1 and 2. Where are we born? We're born into a place, into a garden, right? That where people were meant for. And then they sinned and they're exiled from the place, right? So God comes, he makes the promise to Abraham, and what are they longing for? They're longing to be in their promised place, into the promised land, the land that flows with milk and honey. And then because of the kindness of God and the deliverance of God, they are taken into that place where they now enjoy the fruit of God's bounty and everything that God has to offer, and then and then they sin. And they're exiled from that place. And they come into the new covenant, and there's the Roman occupation, and they're longing for the Messiah. And why are they longing for the Messiah? They are longing for the reign of the Messiah that will usher them into the promised paradise of God, where no longer can their sin cast them out, no longer will they fear exile, no longer will they feel the insecurity of their circumstances, they will be in their place under his rule, and it will be unshakable. This is why Jesus says, I have come to prepare a place for you, a place of many mansions, a place where there is no there is no fear, a place where there are no tears, a place where your peace is not threatened or hindered, but where there are pleasures forevermore. So here's David, David building on this theology of place, and he's coming in and he's remembering. He's remembering the lines have fallen for me in pleasant places. Indeed, I have a beautiful inheritance. Now, I'm from Rabbit Town, alright? That's the country. Y'all don't know nothing about Rabbit Town. I'm from Rabbittown, that's the country. In Rabbit Town, you don't inherit money, you inherit land. And that's better than money, right? In the country, people think of inheritance as land. David must have been from the country, alright? This is how the Jewish people think about inheritance. They think about their corner of the promised land, their corner of the land that flows with milk and honey. Because that's greater security than money. That can't be taken away from them. That provides for them the things that they need. So it's an inheritance that secures the future. David says the lines of, he's talking about the property boundaries, right? The lines have fallen for me in pleasant places. He's like, I've seen the plot of land that I'm getting from my mama and papa, and it is awesome. It's great. I will never have to worry about the land producing. I'm getting the lines are falling in present, pleasant places. But he's actually speaking metaphorically. He's already told us where the place is. Where is this place that he is inheriting? What is this extravagant inheritance that's coming? Preserve me, O God, for in you I take refuge. His mind conceives of God Himself as the place where his soul can go, as the place where he can take his heart, as the place that he can go and be hidden and find refuge and find safety and find security. That his inheritance is not just some land, his inheritance is not just a big pile of cash, his inheritance is as extravagant as the Almighty Himself. See, the purpose of an extravagant inheritance is that it secures your future, it sets you up so that you can thrive and flourish and be all the things that God calls for you to be. Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be a trust fund baby? I talked to somebody in the first service, they were a trust fund baby. Praise God, man, I'm all for you. But if you most of us haven't conceived of such a thing, right? When I was going to college, uh, Prince William was in college at the same time. And I used to watch, you know, they followed him around everywhere he went. And I used to see that and think, what is it like to go take a test and know that your future is not dependent on that test? You know, like he can pass the test, fail the test, ace the test, see he's get degrees on the test. Like, either way, he's inheriting Buckingham Palace, man. Right? Like, either way, he's gonna ascend the throne. Either way, he's fine. Like, his life is not gonna be impacted. And for the rest of us, we fail a test, we get the job or we don't get the job. We get the degree or we don't get the degree. Our future can be dramatically impacted, right? To be a trust fund baby is security, isn't it? It means that the future has been predetermined in your favor. Do you understand, brothers and sisters, that as the children of God, every single one of us are trust fund babies? Our future has already been secured. Not in the here and now, we're waiting. Remember, David's waiting, right? In the here and now we may do without. In the here and now, we may, we may know, like Paul, we may know what it's like to have little, we may know what it's like to have abundance. But what we know is that we have an extravagant inheritance that has been secured for us through the resurrection of Jesus, and that extravagant inheritance has defined our future, clarified, it cannot be taken away from us, and so we're gonna be fine. And so we're gonna be fine. See, brothers and sisters, what it means to enjoy God is it means that I live in the here and now, resting in the inheritance that is to come, delighting in the inheritance that is to come, being sustained by the inheritance that is to come. Three realizations of happiness. David realizes I have what I need. He realizes that I know where I belong, and then finally he realizes I recognize who to trust. I recognize who to trust. Because all of us are in pursuit of happiness, happiness has been monetized, hasn't it? You think about marketing, marketing is not selling you a product, marketing is selling you happiness, right? Okay, let's let's think of a few. Think about McDonald's forever. What was it? I'm loving it, right? This is as much singing as you're gonna hear me do. I'm loving it, right? What are they saying? They're saying if you'll just eat one of our cardboard cheeseburgers and let your kids play in our playground, you're gonna be a little happier today. We're selling you happiness, right? All right, what Burger King? Burger King, have it your way. What's that? Wait, have it your way? What? Okay, have it your way. Yeah, that's it. What's it saying? But I told you, I don't sing. This is Andrew's job. Job, this is great job security for you, my brother. What are they saying? They're saying, like, if you could just be king over your life, wouldn't you be happy? Happy? Wouldn't you be happier? Well, you can't be king over your life, but you can be king over your whopper, like, come get whatever you want. We'll make you happy today, right? Think about Nike. Just do it, just do it. Like, if you would just go and do the dream, if you'll just buy the shoes, get up early, start doing the running, go do the marathon, then then you'll be happy. Where's Disney World? Where is that? That's the happiest place on earth, isn't it? They're all selling to us happiness. Well, what we can see is that modern marketing is just functioning like ancient idols, right? Have you ever wondered? You ever feel like sometimes you'd like to break into the Old Testament sometimes and say, hey, Israel, I know you're a little dense, but if you stop chasing after the wooden gods, it's gonna go better for you, right? Like, don't you just wonder why it is they always found the idols so appealing? Well, the reason they found them so appealing is what did the idols offer to them? Happiness, greater happiness, right? And they offered them happiness at a discounted price. That you don't have to repent, you don't have to love the Lord your God with all of your heart and all of your mind and all of your strength. You don't you don't have to cling on to him and to him only, like like no, no, no. You can have whatever you want, you can do whatever you want, so long as you follow our rituals and do the things that we make us happy, we'll give you what you want. So it's happiness and it's happiness at a discounted price. And so Israel's heart was always open to it. But David, David knows the warning of the Lord. David recognizes that the advertising of the false gods is false advertising. Look at what it says in verse 4. It says, the sorrows of those who run after another god shall multiply. Like your credit cards when you get home from Disney World. It has compounding interest when it comes to misery and sorrow when you run after other gods. That they promise you happiness, but they actually can only deliver you sorrows. Reminds me of a story in the scriptures in 1 Kings chapter 18. 1 Kings chapter 18, the people of God were chasing after the God Baal and Asherah, and they were, they had not completely just abandoned Yahweh, they were just kind of mixing him in for a good old-fashioned syncretism tea, right? And so they're coming and Elijah, God sends him to go and confront the people, and he says, Choose this day whom you will serve. If the if Ba is God, serve him. If Asherah is God, serve her. But if the Lord is God, serve him and him only. So he says, This is what we're gonna do. We're gonna have a battle of the bands. I'm gonna build an altar to the Lord, you're gonna build an altar to Baal, you're gonna be able to go, I'm gonna give you the first crack at it. And whoever can call down the fire of heaven, he will be vindicated as having chosen the true and righteous God. So the prophets of Baal and the prophets of Asherah, there are 850 of them. They begin to dance around their altar, they begin to wail and cry and scream. But it says that no one answered, not one word. Then they they get more and more desperate, and they take knives, and their skin would have already been covered in scars from how many times they have done that. And they would go and they again would cut themselves and pierce themselves with spears until they would begin to bleed their own blood over the altar, hoping, hoping that they could catch the eye of their God. But it says in 1 Kings 18 29, it says, as midday passed, they raved on until the time of the offering of ablation, but there was no voice, no one answered, no one paid attention. In Hebrew, they don't have exclamation points, and so they repeat themselves. To repeat a word three times, it means that I mean this to its highest extent. It's 50 exclamation points after it. So the point is being drawn out clear enough. How sad is it to sell out your soul to the point of piercing yourself with knives and spears for a God that cannot hear you, does not love you, and will not answer you. Brothers and sisters, we do this every day. We may not cut ourselves with knives, we might not puncture ourselves with spears, but we go and we exhaust ourselves at jobs that are gonna replace us the day after we retire. We spend ourselves on side hustles to try to build up a castle, and that castle is made out of sand and is gonna melt as soon as we pass on. We try to build for ourselves kingdoms, kingdoms that no one remembers, kingdoms that never can last. We go on social media and we try to offer ourselves, but no one hears us, no one pays attention, no one cares. How sad is it that we come to the end of our life to recognize that we've sold out our souls for gods that do not care about us, cannot hear us, and will not answer us. See, the God of David, the God of Elijah, is very different. After watching all of the ranting and raving of the false prophets around the altar, Elijah goes and in the English he prays only two sentences. Seems like it was monotone. He prays two sentences because his God, he doesn't have to catch his eye, he doesn't have to get his attention, he doesn't have to cut himself to impress him in some way. His God is ever present, his God is always listening, his God is always waiting. And so, two sentences he prays. James says this is the example of prayer, prayer. And from the sky, like a missile against the dusk night, it comes and it comes and it hits the altar, consumes the offering, consumes the water that had been poured around, and even burns the stones. Elijah was vindicated in his choice. David makes a similar choice as Elijah, and David will be vindicated too. Verses seven and eight, we see the choice that he makes. I bless the Lord who gives me counsel. In the night, my heart also instructs me. In other words, what he's saying is I have found The Lord's word to be trustworthy. I have submitted myself to the counsel of the Lord so much so that it's in my heart, and my heart keeps affirming to me, following after the Lord, obeying the Lord, believing the Lord is the right belief, it is the right path. He says, So I have set the Lord always before me, because he is at my right hand, I shall not be shaken. He says, I have decided to submit myself to the word of God. I have decided that I'm going to keep the Lord before me and I'm going to run after the Lord all the days of my life, even when it's not easy, even when everybody seems to come against me, even when my life seems to be falling down around me, I've set the Lord before me, and I'm going to go after the Lord with everything that I have. See, if you go and look at verses 9 through 11, I told you earlier that nine is the dream. Acts chapter 2 tells us that these verses actually aren't talking about David. In verse 8, David will be shaken. David's not going to live a smooth life. He's not going to live a perfect life. In fact, it says that therefore my heart is always glad, my whole being rejoiced, my flesh dwells secure. Right now, we see David doesn't always dwell secure. He says, You will not abandon my soul into Sheol, Sheol's the grave, or let your holy one see corruption. You know what Peter says in Acts chapter 2? He says, if you go to the grave of David, he's still there. His bones are there. He did not in that moment abandon Sheol. He did not in that moment overcome corruption. He did not in that moment experience pleasures forevermore. Because Peter says, Peter says, there is a greater David that has come. It was always talking about a new David on the way. And that that David, that David would not be shaken. He would set his face like flint toward the cross. And for the joy that was before him, he would endure the cross, but he would be delivered from the grave. And he would not be left there and abandoned in Sheol, but he would overcome the corruption of this world so that he would ascend to the right hand of his father, where there are pleasures forevermore. And that, that, in that moment, when the second David is resurrected, vindicates that David has struck his cast his lots with the right God. It also assures us that verse 9 is not just a dream. That the Lord gave verse 9, and it wasn't immediately about David, but it was still to David. And it is to all of us. That right now it feels like a dream to think that in the internal person I can have hope, in the external person I can have security, so that the total person is rejoicing. It feels like a dream for our kids, it feels like a dream for our church, it feels like a dream for us. But you know what the resurrection says? The resurrection says that's not a dream, that's your purchased reality, that's your inheritance. And you don't have to come and try to cut yourself to catch the eye of the Lord. You don't have to try to shout and scream and dance and do all kinds of fits to hope that he'll listen. All you have to do is accept his invitation. Come to me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Brothers and sisters, that's what it means to enjoy God. It means to take him up on his invitation and to go and to find your complete and total peace and rest in him and in the future that he has secured for you. And that's why the Westminster Catechism says that the chief end of man is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever. Because we start today what we're gonna do always. Can we pray together?