Receiving the goal of our faith: Ps 16

David opens with a prayer: “Keep me safe, O God for in You I take refuge.” He appeals to the Lord because he knows that without the Lord he has no good thing. We live in age that prizes the family. The family is first before all others for many. David has a family, he was the youngest of 8 sons to Jesse. David is the king and has several wives – for so it was then for the kings- and children of his own. As a child and as a man he has family, friends, and fame. Yet he declares that apart from the Lord he has no good thing.

Others in his land may worship other gods. As it was then so it is now, people have gods from money and sports to the idols of false religions. But David refuses to worship any God but the Lord. David knows that the Lord alone is the only true God, in whom he has a delightful inheritance. Consider that phrase ‘surely in the Lord alone, David declares, I have a delightful inheritance. What could he mean?

Inheritances are gifts passed on to you when someone dies. Jesse his dad may have been a rich man. He had flocks of sheep, he had food to spare to supply David’s 3 elder brothers and the commander of their unit when they were in the army against the Philistines. But he is not referring to an inheritance from his dad but from the Lord.

To understand we have to step away from these family references and consider David as a prophet. David doesn’t have a sin-free or a trouble free life. He has has many family troubles, he sins deeply over Bathsheba, loses a child and suffers civil war – yet God refers to him as a man after his own heart. David whatever his faults has a close relationship with God. He knows that God will not abandon him to the dead. He will know the path of life; he will be filled with eternal pleasures at God’s right hand. How can that be? Doesn’t Peter refer to him as dead and buried, with his tomb still present in Jerusalem.

David as a man is dead and buried. But was also David a prophet who speaking of what he saw was to come, tells of the resurrection of Christ, that He was not abandoned to the realm of the dead, and that His body would not see decay. And what was true for Jesus would also be true for all who trust in Him, and in the earlier days of the Old Testament in His Father. In his later 1st letter to the Church Peter praises the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ [who] in His great mercy has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade. This inheritance is kept in heaven for you. That is the inheritance David was referring to.

When Jesus descended to the dead he gathered the righteous of old from the shadow life of Sheol and raised them up to Paradise with Him, there in God’s peace to await the resurrection of the body. Hence as a prophet David wrote: therefore my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices; because the Lord will fill him with me with joy in His presence, and with eternal pleasures at His right hand.

As David rejoices so Peter speaks of our joy,. For though now though now for a little while we may have to suffer grief in all kinds of trials though did not see the living Christ in His earthly mission as Peter did we love Him; and believe in Him and are receiving the end result of your faith, the salvation of your lives.

All who like you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, that is all who trust Him in life with their life are receiving the goal of their faith, their trust an inheritance being kept in heaven for you. It is already there for you. It awaits you. It has your name written over it. It cannot perish. It cannot spoil. It cannot fade. It is there prepared for you. It is the immediate comfort of Paradise, it is and will be the path of the resurrection life in the new creation, where the Lord will fill you with joy in His presence and with eternal pleasures.

When it comes to birthday and Christmas presents I like surprises, our inheritance in Christ will be full of wondrous surprising gifts for as Paul says in 1Corinthians 2:9 “No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love Him.” Let the promises God gives us through David and Peter be our blessed assurance of the joys that will be ours. Amen.

Sing: Blessed Assurance Jesus is mine.