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(upbeat music) - Hi, this is Pastor Tom, and I want to welcome you to week four of
our Look Through the Book of Psalms, day one, Psalm 16 today. And let's begin by
looking at verses five to eight of Psalm 16. Verse five starts, "Lord, you have
assigned me my portion and my cup.

"You have made my lot secure. "The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant
places. "Surely, I have a delightful inheritance.

"I will praise the Lord who counsels me. "Even at night, my heart instructs me.
"I have set the Lord always before me "because he is at my right hand.

"I will not be shaken. " And now I want to read verses nine to 11. And as I read
these verses, listen for the right hand to come up again at the end of these
verses.

"Therefore, my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices. "My body also will rest
secure "because you will not abandon me to the grave, "nor will you let your
Holy One see decay. "You have made known to me the path of life.

"You will fill me with joy in your presence, "with eternal pleasures at your
right hand. " So did you notice? Did you notice in verse eight, the Lord is at
your right hand?

And then did you notice in verse 11 that you are at God's right hand? So which
is it? Well, obviously, the Bible talks about it here.

It's both. God is at your right hand and you are at God's right hand. And when
you look at the truth of this and the meaning of this, there's some real depth
here to the strength that God wants to give you for today.

So let's take a look at this together. First, God is at your right hand. The
right hand is the place of strength.

You carried the sword in your right hand. You pulled the bow with your right
hand. So it was the place of strength.

And Psalm 16 talks about God's strength for your life. The strength of God's
protection. The strength of God's provision.

God is at your right hand. He is your place of strength. When you look at the
strength of God's protection, you see it in like 16.

1 says, "Keep me safe, O God, for in you I take refuge. " And then verse eight
says, "I have set the Lord before me "because he is at my right hand. "I will
not be shaken.

" That's God's protection. And did you notice in verse eight what the Bible
tells us to do? If I'm going to experience God's protection in my life, if I'm
going to sense I will not be shaken, David says, "I have set the Lord always before
me.

" You set the Lord before you. That means you bring him up in your thoughts to
be number one. You set him before you.

There's a lot of things you and I can think about today. We can make number one
in our thoughts. And whatever we tend to set before us as the thing we think
about the most, is the thing that tends to guide our lives.

If I set the Lord before me, God is strong. God is powerful, and he will
strengthen me. So these verses talk about the strength of God's protection.

They also talk about the strength of God's provision. In verse two, I said to
the Lord, "You are my Lord. "Apart from you, I have no good thing.

" God provides everything. I have no good thing without him. And then in verses
five and six, those verses we looked at earlier, "Lord, you have assigned me my
portion and my cup.

"You have made my lot secure. "The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant
places. "Surely, I have a delightful inheritance.

" Now, you might have noticed how often the word my is used in this psalm.
Boundary lines for me, my portion, my cup, my lot. There are things that are
yours now because you are his.

And that's the strength of God's provision in your life. There are things that
are yours. The boundary lines have fallen in pleasant places.

The boundary lines in that day were the lines of your land, what your family
owned. And God has provided for you. There are boundary lines in your life that
he's drawn around things that he has given into your life, things that he has
provided you with.

And there's the strength of that in your life. It's not only things. Verse seven
says, "I will praise the Lord who counsels me.

"Even at night, my heart instructs me. " So God, in strengthening you, also
strengthens you with his direction, with his counsel. And even at night,
sometimes when you wake up, he reminds you this is what you're relying on.

This is the direction to go. That's God's provision in your life. That's the
strength of God being at your right hand.

So this psalm talks about that, but it also talks about the fact that you are at
God's right hand. The right hand of the king, God is the king, was the place of
reward. So you're at the place of reward.

Verse 11 talks about this. "You have made known to me the path of life. "You
will fill me with joy in your presence, "with eternal pleasures at your right
hand.

" In this one verse, you see the reward of God's guidance. You see the reward of
God's presence with you throughout the day, joy in your presence. You see the
reward of God's promise of eternity, eternal pleasures at your right hand.

God's guidance, God's presence, God's promise. It's one of the most powerful
single verses about God's blessings in all the Bible, this verse. You are at
God's right hand, and God is at your right hand.

Now, not to be too literal, because God obviously does not have actual hands
like we do, but I was thinking of the picture that's here. It can't be both if
you're standing beside each other, that you're at one another's right hand. The
only way, if you think about this as a picture, for us to be at one another's
right hand is if we're standing face to face.

Now, I know we could be back to back too, but go with me on this, is if we're
standing face to face. It can be both, I'm at God's right hand, God's at my
right hand, when I'm standing face to face with God. Now, there's some truth in
this verse about that, the Hebrew word for presence that we just read in verse
11.

It comes from the idea of being before God's face. That's the literal meaning of
this. So we're standing face to face with God.

It's a reminder that the best way to face your enemies is not side by side with
the Lord, as strong as that may seem, it's face to face with the Lord, depending
on him, totally depending on him. God has not added to your life to give you
strength. God is all that you need to give you the strength and the provision
that you need.

Now, we know from the New Testament that these words in Psalm 16 are about
Jesus. In his message at Pentecost, Peter says that this Psalm refers to Jesus.
And Paul did the same in his sermon at Antioch in Acts chapter 13.

You will not let your Holy One stay in the grave. They knew that that referred
to Jesus. And David, who wrote 1,000 years before Jesus came, knew that he only
had these things because there was a promised Messiah who was coming.

The only reason you can be face to face with God is because of what Jesus faced
for you on the cross. And in his death and resurrection, he opens the door in
your life to God's protection and God's provision and God's eternal promise for
your life. So let's thank him.

Would you pray with me? And just say, Father, thank you. Thank you for all that
you've given me in Christ.

And I pray that throughout this day, I would recognize that you are at my right
hand. You are the place of strength in my life. And nothing else.

And I would remember throughout the day that I'm at your right hand, that God,
you are pouring out your blessings on me in ways that I cannot even see on this
world. And that one day in heaven, I'm going to be just totally awed by all the
blessings that you give to those that you love. Thank you for who you are.

Help me to live with that sense, that picture of who you are throughout this day
to day, I pray, in your name, amen. Well, tomorrow we're going to take a look at
Psalm 17 together. It's a Psalm about the wonder of God's love.