Coney Hill Baptist Church
Demonstrating God’s Love Together
27th April 2008
Encountering God:
Joy & Hope
Psalm 16
Intro:
What have you got to be cheerful about?
It’s a question that, when asked, suggests the answer, ‘nothing’, and that we ought to be more solemn. It also confirms though that joy, without reason, is, at best, wishful dreaming and, potentially, naive foolishness.
When we talk about ‘joy’ in church, or about ‘hope in the Lord’, sometimes it can feel like whistling in the wind. An attempt to keep our spirits up when all the evidence is against us. The Biblical basis to these words though is far stronger. They are natural and inevitable consequences of any real encounter with the living God.
The final verses of Psalm 16 contain wonderful verses of confidence and delight … but they come from the circumstances that this song was written in, and the words that precede them.
In 1 Samuel 26 David is on the run. Pursued by King Saul and 3,000 troops, things look bleak. David is struggling not only because he’s in fear for his life but also as a result of the accusations that have been made against him. He has been driven out of his land, and by implication the inheritance granted to him by God has been lost, he was sent away with the damming instruction ‘go away and serve other gods’. In an audacious counter attack he invades the king’s encampment, he spares Saul’s life but takes instead his belongings to prove how close he was. Rather than take Saul’s life he wants to show him that his relationship with God, the things that really matter to him and ultimately keep him safe, are not in Saul’s remit to give, whatever the size of his army.
And so he writes this Psalm. The first 6 verses affirm what his enemies, and the circumstances he was in, were denying. He has ‘a delightful inheritance’ (v.6), it is God who has made him secure (v.5) and who keeps him safe (v.1), he will ignore the claims of those around him (v.4) knowing that it’s God alone that matters in his life (v.2).
It’s from here that the worship of the final 5 verses flows…
He’s exuberant, he’s full of it. Happy and enthusiastic, positive and excited. ‘My heart is glad and my tongue rejoices’, he says, ‘full of joy’.
His Joy is Because he Keeps God Close (v.8)
As close as he was to Saul, closer than Saul’s guards were.
His Joy is Because he is Going God’s Way (v.11)
Paying little attention to the maps of men (v.6)
His Hope is Because He Lives in Eternity (v.10)
It’s not so much that his hope is for heaven, but that because of the reality of heaven his hope is everywhere.
Conc.
In this, our last in the series of encountering God, we’ve seen again about how meeting with Him always makes a difference, has an effect. In our worship we are changed. If our praise is, as we claim, a celebration of the true presence of Jesus here, then we need to be effected. If we are not inspired and awestruck, comforted and challenged, if not filed with joy and hope, then people might rightly ask what is it we’ve been doing.
Office Address:
Coney Hill Road
West Wickham
Kent
BR4 9BU