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"I say to the LORD, 'You are my Lord; I have no good apart from you.'"

~ Psalm 16:2

 

In this psalm David highlights the two ways that are set before every human being…to run after other gods in a form of self-trust or to run to the true God, taking refuge in him, trusting his eternal goodness.

The disparity between the two is clear and obvious.  But in the ‘moments of life’, we can be easily deceived, and the distinctions can become fuzzy.  This is not the reality of course, but instead the blindness and hardness of our own sinful hearts.

The pursuit (“run after” v.4) of another god is really a self-pursuit, a self-worship…it is idolatry.  John Calvin once said, “Man’s nature, so to speak, is a perpetual factory of idols…Man’s mind, full as it is of pride and boldness, dares to imagine a god according to its own capacity; as it sluggishly plods, indeed is overwhelmed with the crassest ignorance, it conceives an unreality and an empty appearance as God.” (Institutes, 1:108)  The result of such a pursuit is sorrow and the multiplication of sorrow (v.4); a pursuit requiring blood of which there is no satiation (v.4); a pursuit that ends in abandonment and corruption (v.10).

On the contrary, trust in God through Jesus Christ results in refuge (v.1), good (v.2), excellence and delight (v.3), certainty (v.5), pleasant places and a beautiful inheritance (v.6), counsel and instruction (v.7), confidence and stability (v.8), gladness, rejoicing and security (v.9), holiness (v.10), knowledge, life, joy and pleasures forevermore (v.11).

Pray for me that my heart will neither be deceived from without nor deceive itself from within.  I pray the same for you.  Let us walk with one another in such a way that truth is known, loved, lived and shared.  May we take delight in one another as saints of the LORD (v.3).

Like David, we are to always set the LORD before us (v.8), making him our chosen portion (v.5), taking counsel (v.7) from his Word, his people and in prayer.  In so doing through Jesus Christ, are hearts will be glad, our whole being rejoices, we have fullness of joy and are eternally secure, set to enjoy pleasures forevermore in the presence of the LORD! (v.9-11)