Psalm 16 (Chris Barnes)

Text: Psalm 16

“My body rests in safety. For you will not leave my soul among the dead or allow your holy one to rot in the grave.” (Psalm 16: 9-10)
 
OBSERVE: In this psalm David asks the Lord for protection, trusting in God as a safe place from enemies and evil. David makes it clear that everything good he has comes from the Lord. This psalm displays David's joy, using words such as "delight, "glad” and "pleasures." It is clear that David celebrates his relationship with God in his daily life. He can feel secure because the Lord is always with him, even in the face of death. His celebration foreshadows the Messiah, who would conquer death and experience resurrection. David displays assurance in his eternal destiny throughout this psalm.
 
INTERPRET: This is a wonderful psalm relating how David found the secret of contentment and great gladness even in pressing times. This psalm also predicts Jesus and His work for us. Perhaps unknowingly, David spoke beyond himself. In one sense David was indeed the Holy One of God, whose soul would not be left in the grave. Yet in a greater and more literal sense, only Jesus Christ fulfills this in His resurrection.
 
Fresh from his study with Jesus, Peter stood before the crowds in Jerusalem on Pentecost, quoting the words of David: “My body rests in safety. For you will not leave my soul among the dead or allow your holy one to rot in the grave” (Psalm 16: 9-10). Then Peter did something with the psalm that must have seemed outrageous to those who had read it all their lives: he said that David really wasn’t talking about himself but about Jesus (Acts 2: 29-31).

In quoting and applying this passage from Psalm 16 to the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus, Peter showed an inspired understanding of the work of Jesus on the cross. He understood that because Jesus bore our sin without becoming a sinner, He remained the Holy One, even in His death. Since it is incomprehensible that God’s Holy One should be bound by death, the resurrection was absolutely inevitable.

APPLICATION: It had dawned on Peter that the words from Psalm 16 went beyond anything that David experienced. David did die and was buried; David’s flesh did see corruption. Peter recognized the voice of the Messiah speaking prophetically in the voice of his ancestor David.

The fact that Jesus remained God’s Holy One despite the ordeal of the cross demonstrates that Jesus bore the penalty of human sin without becoming a sinner Himself. It also shows that this payment of sins was perfect and complete, the only type of payment a Holy One could make. In these ways according to Peter, the resurrection proves the perfection of Jesus’ work on the cross. 

What an amazing truth! Not only will we live because of Jesus; but we will escape the grave. Not only will we escape the grave; but we will receive an immortal glorious body.

So…….if we believe in the Risen One, should we not live in ways that display our belief in these truths? We will live forever because of Christ; so we can put our focus now on the eternal Kingdom. We will escape the grave; so we do not have to live in fear. We will receive an immortal glorious body; so we should not allow our current flaws to chain us. Let us live for Christ; now and forevermore.

Prayer: Jesus, Risen One, because you live, I will live. Because you conquered the grave, my soul will not be left among the dead. And though my flesh may rot and decay, I believe in your promise that you will take my weak, mortal body and change it into a glorious body like you own. AMEN.

SONG: Because He Lives