Psalm 16: Prayers In The Sun
Read Psalm 16
Hopefully you have had one of those days. One of those days where the sun shines perfectly bright and warm, where the coffee is exquisite, or the company is the kind that you wish you could stay at that meal or that vacation forever. The psalms, are not all complaints for help or outraged pleas for justice. The psalms are a prism displaying the full radiance of what it means to be human before God. Throughout the early part of the psalter, many of the Psalms have been focused upon the life of the ungodly and the wicked. The psalmist has looked outward at the state of the world and determined that those who live their lives taking advantage of others seem to have a pretty good life, they are economically secure and thus free from the accompanying, all-consuming anxiety of not knowing where their next meal is coming from. They live fat and happy in the face of God’s law and the Psalmist implores God to do something to balance the scales. Here in Ps. 16 we see the opposite. David says of those that live according to God’s law— “As for the holy ones in the land, they are the noble”[1]Ps. 16v3—whereas those who follow other gods are those who “multiply their sorrows, they drink offerings of blood.”[2]Ps. 16v4
The psalmist here is not worried about everyone else, he is simply expressing his trust in the Lord and gratitude for his provision. David proclaims both his faith in God and the extent of his Lord’s reign in v. 2:
You are my Lord; I have no good apart from you.
David, in worshiping the Lord, has seen that he is the gracious giver of every good thing and the benefits are real-life security—”the boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; I have a goodly heritage[3]Ps. 16v6. David is having one of those days, a day of sabbath, a day of peace where he sees his life as it truly is in the hands of the Lord, who is God over all. He says, “My heart is glad, and my soul rejoices; my body also rests secure. For you do not give me up to Sheol, or let your faithful one see the Pit.”[4]Ps. 16vv9-10 Ps. 16 is an expression of the beauty of a life lived trusting in the Lord. David’s life is ordered by rhythms of prayer and praise- I bless the Lord who gives me counsel; in the night also my heart instructs me. I kept the Lord always before me; because he is at my right hand, I shall not be moved.[5]Ps. 16v8
Life lived in the presence of the Lord, as the psalms so openly attest, is not always easy. But in embracing the Lord in every season, in developing rhythms to soak in the presence of Jesus and to be addressed and shaped by him really does produce a harvest of joy.[6]J. L. Mays, Commentary on The Psalms”The psalm teaches that trust is not merely a warm feeling of a passing impulse in a time of trouble; it is a structure of acts and experiences that open one’s consciousness to the Lord as the supreme reality of life.”