(How to Understand the Kjv Bible) 19 Psalm 16 — Keith Simons

Welcome. My name is Keith Symons. I'm a Bible teacher from England and this is our podcast on how to understand the King James Version of the Bible. Today we're going to be looking at a great psalm of the Resurrection, a prophecy of Messiah's resurrection.

Psalm 16 as a Prophecy of Resurrection

It's Psalm 16. Let me begin, not with the psalm, but by quoting to you from Job chapter 19 beginning at verse 23. I've quoted that partly because, of course, it's Job's great declaration that he believes in the resurrection, that he will come alive again after his death and see God.

And also how it depends on his Redeemer, his Messiah coming and living and standing at the latter day upon the earth. But I've also quoted that because Psalm 16 begins with an unusual title, Mictam of David.

And the word Mictam literally means an inscribed, an engraved poem. And it's an unusual title, we don't often see it, it's just in a few of the psalms. But how appropriate that David, in this psalm when he's talking about the resurrection of the dead and how Messiah will bring about the resurrection of the dead, is also thinking that his words should be engraved, that he wants his words to be recorded in the future as a testimony long after he's dead, that he believes in Messiah and God's power to raise the dead.

So we're going to go through Psalm 16 word by word and verse by verse, looking as we usually do, at its meaning. First one says, Preserve me, O God, for in thee do I put my trust. It's a prayer like many of the prayers that David prayed.

David often prayed, I am trusting in God, God please protect me from my enemies. He had many enemies who wanted to kill him. There was King Saul, before he became king, and then when he did become king, there were foreign nations on every side that were his enemies.

But here, when we read the psalm as a whole, we realise that David is not just praying for God to preserve him, protect him from the fear of death, or even from his enemies who want to kill him. No, this is a prayer for God to preserve him from death itself.

David has put his trust in God and he trusts God to deliver him even from death. Verse 2 continues, O my soul, thou hast said unto the Lord, thou art my Lord, thou art my Lord, my goodness extendeth not to thee.

Those words, O my soul, appear in italic type in the King James Bible, which means that they're not actually there in the Hebrew words, they've been added so that we know that the thee of verse 1, which means God, is not the same as the thou of verse 2.

David is speaking here to his inner life, his soul, to himself. He's saying, thou, in other words, I have said unto the Lord, thou art my Lord. I've said unto the Lord in block capitals, so that's referring to the special name of God, and what he's said to the Lord is, thou art my Lord, in normal type.

In other words, he considers God to be his master, his God. He respects God and he respects him so much that he adds the words, my goodness extendeth not to thee. In other words, I can't compare myself with God.

God is pure and perfect and right in everything he does. I've been guilty of many wrong and evil acts and even when I'm doing the right things and even when I've turned from my sin, I'm still so weak in everything that I do.

I can't compare myself with God. But David says, there is a way in which I am in a very small way like God is. Verse 3, but to the saints that are in the earth and to the excellent in whom is all my delight.

In other words, David's saying, I'm not like God in his greatness or in his holiness or in his pureness or in his perfection, but I share one thing with him. I approve of the same sort of people that God approves of.

I approve of the saints, God's people, that are in the earth, that could mean in the land. In other words, I approve of Israel's people when they're living in a right relationship with God in the land that God has promised to them and to the excellent, the great ones among them.

This is what I approve of, the ones who are truly living for God and serving God and using their responsibility and their areas of importance to do what is right. In them, David says, is all my delight.

They bring me great pleasure just as they bring great pleasure to God. Verse 4, yet there's another sort of people who I can't approve of at all, a sort of people who are bringing troubles upon themselves.

Their sorrows shall be multiplied that hasten after another God. Their drink offerings of blood will I not offer, nor take up their names into my lips. Their sorrows will be multiplied, they're bringing great troubles on themselves, more and more troubles, the people who choose to follow quickly, that's meaning of hasten, after another God.

David's Rejection of False Gods

They love a false God, they desire an evil God, an imitation of God, someone who is not God, and they've placed their false God above the true God, the living God, the perfect God, the wonderful God whom I serve, says David.

Their drink offerings of blood will I not offer. Well, when drink offerings were offered in the temple, they were drink offerings of wine. That was the ceremony that God directed his people to carry out, to pour on the sacrifices wine as an offering to God.

When it says here drink offerings of blood, it seems it doesn't mean that in false religions people were offering blood in the place of wine or mixing wine with the blood. It seems to mean that these people who were serving another God were so evil that they were carrying out murders, and it's saying they murdered people in honour of their false gods.

These are the evil people who I am against. This is what the evil religions were like in many of the countries that opposed David. They murdered people as part of the religion, and David says I'm not going to copy that.

I'm not going to live my life by murder, not for my religion, not for political advantage, not for any advantage, because they are guilty of such evil and such terrible acts. Nor take up their names into my lips.

The names is the names of the false gods. David is saying, in accordance with God's law, he's not even going to mention the names of false gods, in case perhaps if he mentions the name of a false god it somehow tempts him into giving honour to that false god.

So David is being careful not even to say the name of these false and evil gods, that they are so wicked. So why does David care so much about this? Verse five, the Lord is the portion of mine inheritance and of my cup.

Thou maintainest my lot. Okay, Israel was land that God had promised to his people, from the Jewish families, the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and God gave them an inheritance in that land, but of some of them, of the Levites, the priests, God said the Lord will be their inheritance.

In other words, the Lord will be their special place in that land. It will be God who was their cup, who would sustain them in the land, who would look after them. Now David didn't belong to the priests, he belonged to the tribe of Judah, yet he declared his real inheritance wasn't merely land, but the Lord.

God as David's Inheritance

The Lord it was, who he wanted above all. It was the Lord who he wanted to sustain him. Thou maintainest my lot. The land was distributed by what we would call a lottery, by taking names at random to distribute it to the various people, or not at random because they prayed and they asked God to guide the selection.

God is both David's inheritance and the one who made sure he kept his inheritance, who maintained it for him. Verse 6 is also on this subject. The lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places, yea I have a goodly heritage.

That's referring to the lines, the pieces of string by which people would measure out the plot that they'd received in the land, the promised land, their own land, which they could then farm. And David says, I've got the lines in a very pleasant place, a goodly heritage, the land given to me is excellent.

But his land, his inheritance, remember, verse 5, the Lord is the portion of my inheritance. So he's not talking about claiming his land. Like a farmer might say those words and say, I've been given a very fertile plot of land, I'm very pleased with my plot of land.

David means, I'm very pleased with the Lord, I'm very pleased with God. It is wonderful to have God as your inheritance. Verse 7, I will bless the Lord who hath given me counsel. Counsel means advice.

God himself has taught me, therefore I bless him or I praise him. My reins also instruct me in the night seasons. He's talking about, the reins really means the kidneys, an inner part of the body, deep inside, hidden within his body.

There's something that warns him. We would say the conscience. The conscience warns him when he's troubled, when he wanders away from God. It's not just God's advice that brings him back. He sees that deep inside himself, God has placed something to tell him, no, you're doing the wrong thing.

Go back to God, return to God, trust again in God, turn from your sins, believe in God. Verse 8, I have set the Lord always before me. Because he is at my right hand, I shall not be moved. So in other words, I'm thinking of God constantly.

It's as if God is in front of me as I make each decision, or it's as if he's at my right hand, he's that close to me that I could touch him. That's what gives me safety. That's why I shall not be moved.

David's Hope Beyond Death

But what about in death? What's going to happen to David in death? This close relationship with God, yes, we can understand it continuing through his life, but what hope has he for the time when he dies?

Won't that separate him from God? Won't he no longer be in the land that God has given to his people? Won't he no longer be in life? David replies, verse 9, therefore my heart is glad and my glory rejoiceth.

My flesh also shall rest in hope. Okay, so David's heart, his glory, and his flesh. His heart, the part of him that deep inside him has the closest relationship, as it were, with God. So it's as if he says his spirit.

God, we sometimes say, is in my heart or in my spirit. God is there, present with him. Therefore, even in death, my heart or my spirit isn't being disappointed. It's glad. It's glad because then it will be even closer to God.

What about David's soul? His glory, as he puts it. The part of him that, if he's going to be proud about any part of himself, he'd be proud about the soul. It's difficult in the Bible to distinguish between the soul and the spirit.

Here we've got the spirit, the heart as a living force which drives his whole self. And we've got the glory, the part of him that, of which he can be most proud, if he can be proud of anything, his inner life.

And he says, my glory rejoiceth. So even in death, his spirit is safe, his soul is safe. But what of his body? Is it really right that his body should be destroyed in the grave? No, says David. My flesh also shall rest in hope.

When I die, you'll lay my body in its grave and it will be resting. It will be resting in hope because it's waiting for the day of the resurrection. It's waiting for the day of Messiah's rule when I will rise again and body and soul and spirit be united.

Verse 10, for thou wilt not leave my soul in hell, neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption. Okay, now the Hebrew language tends to not use the theological words that we use. Even in normal English, we've got theological words.

We speak about God, we speak about the devil, we speak about angels, we speak about heaven and we speak about hell. And these words only belong, as it were, in our theology, in our teaching about God, in our religion.

But the Hebrew language uses words which don't belong only in religion. So the Hebrew word for God is also used of a strong and powerful ruler or judge. The Hebrew word for the devil is the word for someone who accuses you in court.

The Hebrew word for an angel is the same word that you use if you send your servant to carry a message. The heavens is the skies. And when it talks about hell, the word that's used there, sheol, it also means the grave.

It's using the grave, the place where you put dead bodies, as a word picture and in appropriate passages, it means hell. So David says, God, you're not going to abandon my soul in the grave. You're not going to abandon the life that's in me in the grave because when I die, I'm going to go to be with you in heaven.

Neither wilt thou suffer thine holy one to see corruption. If my life in me cannot rot in the grave or in hell, then how can someone who's holy see corruption? How can the body of that person be eaten by whatever it is that destroys dead bodies in the grave?

How can it suffer decay and ruin when you've established a right relationship with that person? Now in Acts 2, Peter discusses this on the day of Pentecost. He says, but David did die and he was buried and we know the place of his grave.

It's here in Jerusalem and it's here to this day and David's body did decay and has been destroyed in the passage of a couple of thousand years between the time when David lived, that should be a thousand years or so in the time between when David lived and when Peter lived.

Peter's Pentecost Interpretation of Psalm 16

So what does this mean? And the King James Bible translators looked at what Peter said and they said, therefore the words holy one here mean the Messiah, the King from David's family. David is not just discussing himself here.

He's first and foremost discussing the Messiah. It's by means of the Messiah whose body doesn't see corruption, whose body doesn't decay, whose body God raises to life on the third day that this promise is fulfilled.

Messiah wouldn't be abandoned in the grave. He wouldn't be abandoned in hell. God would raise him to life. It was impossible for him to remain dead and risen to life again and free from all the corruption or the decay or the destruction of the grave.

He would go to the right hand of God to live until the day when he returned to rule, the day that Job spoke about in those words we read at the beginning. I know that my Redeemer liveth and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth and though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God.

Yes, just like Job believed in the resurrection, just like Abraham believed in the resurrection, David too believed in the resurrection and Job and David saw so clearly that it would be through Messiah raising from the dead that they too would be raised from the dead.

Something which Paul testifies to in 1 Corinthians chapter 15 that just as Christ rose from the dead so God's people will rise from the dead. Their bodies will live again along with the souls and the spirits which never really died but went to be with God in heaven.

The Path of Life and Fullness of Joy

So David in his closing verse declares thou wilt show me the path of life. You'll show me not the way to life but the way of life, the way to be living with you always because in thy presence is fullness of joy at thy right hand.

When we're in God's presence, when we're close to God, when we're at the face of God, that's what in thy presence literally means, there are pleasures forevermore. My email address if you like to write to me is 333 KJV at gmail .com.

Please say that you heard this talk on Psalm 16. That's 333 KJV at gmail .com and now let me read to you the whole Psalm. Psalm 16, Mictam of David. Preserve me O God for in thee do I put my trust. O my soul thou hast said unto the Lord thou art my Lord.

My goodness extendeth not to thee but to the saints that are in the earth and to the excellent in whom is all my delight. Their sorrows shall be multiplied that hasten after another God. Their drink offerings of blood will I not offer nor take up their names into my lips.

The Lord is a portion of mine inheritance and of my cup. Thou maintainest my lot. The lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places. Yea I have a goodly heritage. I will bless the Lord who hath given me counsel.

My rains also instruct me in the night season. I have set the Lord always before me. Because he is at my right hand I shall not be moved. Therefore my heart is glad and my glory rejoiceth. My flesh also shall rest in hope.

For thou wilt not leave my soul in hell. Neither wilt thou suffer thine holy one to see corruption. Thou wilt show me the path of life. In thy presence is fullness of joy. At thy right hand there are pleasures forevermore.