When Not Even Death Can Shake You!
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“I will praise the LORD, who counsels me; even at night my heart instructs me. I keep my eyes always on the LORD. With Him at my right hand, I will not be shaken. Therefore my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices; my body also will rest secure, because You will not abandon me to the realm of the dead, nor will You let Your faithful one see decay. You make known to me the path of life; You will fill me with joy in Your presence, with eternal pleasures at Your right hand.”
Psalm 16:7-11 (NIV)
What do you think about at night when you can’t sleep? Someone said, “Instead of counting sheep, you should talk to the Shepherd.” Psalm 16 was written by a shepherd who became a King, David. When David couldn’t sleep, he thought about the Lord. He listened for His counsel and the quiet whisper of God’s voice to his heart. No wonder David was called a man after God’s own heart!
In verse 8 he wrote, “I keep my eyes always on the LORD. With Him at my right hand, I will not be shaken.” This is a unique sense of security felt by Christ followers who keep their eyes on the Lord despite the troubles around them. He is not saying that you’ll be exempt from problems. Jesus told us that in this world we would have troubles. In Matthew 5:45 (NIV), He said, “He (GOD) causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.” When our world is rocked with bad news, we have the good news that our Father is in charge of this world! Unbelievers live with a sense of hopelessness and confusion about their purpose and destiny, but the Christ follower has his eyes fixed on the Lord with the confidence of His presence.
Now the Psalm shifts from the Psalmist’s relationship with God to a prophetic revelation of the Messiah’s relationship with His Father describing His life, His death, His resurrection and His ascension in verses 8 through 11. It’s a passage that both Peter and Paul refer to in the New Testament that validates the claim of Jesus as the Messiah! Peter quotes from it in his first sermon at Pentecost in Acts 2:25-31. It was the heart of his message! When Peter quoted this Psalm in his sermon that day, he explained it like this in verses 29 to 31, “Fellow Israelites, I can tell you confidently that the patriarch David died and was buried, and his tomb is here to this day. But he was a prophet and knew that God had promised him on oath that He would place one of His descendants on His throne. Seeing what was to come, he spoke of the resurrection of the Messiah, that He was not abandoned to the realm of the dead, nor did His body see decay.”
Like David, you and I can face death with a glad heart, confident that one day, we, too, will have a new glorified body like Christ! God will not abandon us in the grave! Death will have its day, but resurrection will have all eternity!
Paul, the apostle, also used this same Messianic Psalm of David to prove the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead in Acts 13:36-37 when he said, “Now when David had served God’s purpose in his own generation, he fell asleep; he was buried with his ancestors and his body decayed. But the one whom God raised from the dead did not see decay.”
The Old Testament offered only a shadow of the full light that Christ’s death and resurrection would reveal. This was the Good News of the New Covenant that transformed both Peter and Paul’s life and transforms ours today!
I love the way Dr. J. Vernon McGee outlines this Psalm:
In verse 8 we have the life of Christ. “I keep my eyes always on the LORD. With Him at my right hand, I will not be shaken.” That, my friend, was the pathway He followed down here, and it is the pathway I want to follow.
Then in verse 9 we have the death of Christ: “Therefore my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices; my body also will rest secure.” He died there upon the cross, knowing that God would raise Him from the dead.
Then we have the resurrection of Christ in verse 10: “because You will not abandon Me to the realm of the dead, nor will You let Your faithful one see decay.”
Then we have the ascension of Christ in verse 11: “You make known to Me the path of life; You will fill Me with joy in Your presence, with eternal pleasures at Your right hand.”
What a comfort this Psalm brings to our hearts today! We can rest secure when we fix our eyes on Jesus who died and rose again for us and one day is coming again to take us to our heavenly home! He is the central glory and joy of heaven! He will fill us with joy in His presence and eternal pleasures at His right hand! Until then, the Psalmist says, “You guide me with Your counsel, and afterward You will take me into glory.” Psalm 73:24 (NIV)