Psalm 16: 1 – 11
Boundary Lines
1 Preserve me, O God, for in You I put my trust. 2 O my soul, you have said to the LORD, “You are my Lord, my goodness is nothing apart from You.” 3 As for the saints who are on the earth, “They are the excellent ones, in whom is all my delight.” 4 Their sorrows shall be multiplied who hasten after another god; Their drink offerings of blood I will not offer, nor take up their names on my lips. 5 O LORD, You are the portion of my inheritance and my cup; You maintain my lot. 6 The lines have fallen to me in pleasant places; Yes, I have a good inheritance. 7 I will bless the LORD who has given me counsel; My heart also instructs me in the night seasons. 8 I have set the LORD always before me; Because He is at my right hand I shall not be moved. 9 Therefore my heart is glad, and my glory rejoices; My flesh also will rest in hope. 10 For You will not leave my soul in Sheol, nor will You allow Your Holy One to see corruption. 11 You will show me the path of life; In Your presence is fullness of joy; At Your right hand are pleasures forevermore.
Composing today’s teaching I zeroed in on verse 6 of Psalm 16 “The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; surely I have a delightful inheritance.”
So, the statement ‘The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places’ is a pleasant saying verse but what does it mean?
Do you own a home or maybe even a farm? You would then have a good idea what this verse is talking about. It refers to property lines.
I love open spaces. My first house was in Levittown, Pennsylvania. The ugly fence village. Everyone wanted to keep their space to themselves and made sure by throwing up various types of fences. Some are wooden, and some are aluminum or steel. All of them after time are in disrepair and are a sore blight to the area.
By the Lords Great Grace, He allowed us to purchase land and build a brand-new home in a new housing development. Looking over all the plots I joyfully selected one that has a county park begin at the back of my property. In the summer the temperature in a good ten degrees cooler because of the forest behind us. I was looking forward to sitting out back and just reflect in God’s Goodness and His Creativity.
However, one day as I sat out back I noticed contractor’s surveying the property next door. I realized that they were measuring the property to install a fence. Was this a joke or what? The guy next door was pulling a Levittown and was going to have a fence put up to claim his property to himself. Why would you pick a house hooked on to a park and then throw up a fence? This evil neighbor was not allowing my line to fall on pleasant places.
There is a truth here for me and you. This verse is not just talking about property boundaries. It is talking about how we represent our King Lord Jesus. Our Holy Maker wants us to be molded into His image and He Is Good and Long Suffering.
What would it mean if you really lived out this truth? Imagine this in terms of property lines between neighbors. When God created you and me, He created an original. He gave each of us a unique ‘property.’
When we become jealous of someone else’s gifting, talent or anything else for that matter and then covet it for our own, is it any different than wandering across our property line and trespassing on our neighbor’s land? In real life, trespassing is a crime. In the same way, I believe it is an insult to our Maker when we cross the boundary lines He has created for us, as if what He gave us is not good enough.
Rest in who God has made you to be. Psalm 139:13 tells us that God knit you together in your mother’s womb. You are not supposed to be a combination of the people you look up to; you are to be 100 percent of who God created you to be. You have a unique contribution to this world and to the Kingdom of God.
Reflect and ask the Lord if you are living outside your boundary lines? He promises that you have a “delightful inheritance” inside those lines. Are you trespassing through anger, jealousy, coveting or saying “yes” to the wrong things?
Let His mind be in you and rest securely in who God has made your to be and with what He has called you to do. That is the pleasant place where it is good to live.
1 Preserve me, O God, for in You I put my trust.
During his inspired building up of the psalm David ascends to greater and greater heights of being lost in YHWH, until in the end he recognizes that those who had been made ‘holy’ (separated to God, devout, faithful) like him could not possibly face corruption. To suggest that one so made holy by God could be laid in the grave and left there to rot was beyond his comprehension and acceptance. Their future had to be in the presence of God. It was by no means fully thought out. It was a flight of the soul. But it contained within it the seed thought that would blossom out into the resurrection of God’s Holy One, the Greater David. He foresaw more than he knew. For what was true for David would be even more true for the great Seed of David.
In Acts 2.25 Peter says of this psalm that the one who spoke through it was David, and he added that he spoke as a prophet, for through it he foresaw not only his own certainty of life with God in some form beyond the grave, but in seed form to an even greater resurrection and certainty of life for his Greater Son.
After an opening call on God as his refuge and stronghold in verse 1 the Psalm can be divided up into four central thoughts, indicated by the mention of YHWH.:
• He has said to YHWH, ‘You are my Lord’ (2-4).
• YHWH maintains his lot and destiny (5-6).
• YHWH has given him counsel (7).
• ‘I have set YHWH always before me’ (8-11).
In these four ideas lies the fullness of the Christian life, recognition of His Lordship, recognizing that our ways are in His hands, receiving our counsel and wisdom from God, and setting God always before our faces.
The Psalm opens with a plea for protection. The psalmist commits himself to God and prays that God (El) will preserve him in all circumstances, because he sees God as a safe refuge in Whom he can find shelter. It is a prayer based on the confidence of what God is to him, not because of some situation of urgency that requires assistance, but as an overall basis of life.
We too should seek to take such refuge in God daily in a similar way. It is the right situation to be in for a man of faith.
2 O my soul, you have said to the LORD, “You are my Lord, my goodness is nothing apart from You.” 3 As for the saints who are on the earth, “They are the excellent ones, in whom is all my delight.”
The psalmist now addresses himself. ‘You’ have said to YHWH.’
He reminds himself that he has declared YHWH to be his sovereign Lord, to be the source of all his benefits, truly of his whole life. For apart from Him he has nothing. So, he delights in the fact that YHWH is everything to him, and he has no good beyond or apart from Him. He is a YHWH-committed man.
Also with this thought is his delight in YHWH’s own true people, those truly set apart to God, His ‘holy ones’. He sees them as the true ‘nobles’ of Israel, the most excellent people on earth and as such takes delight in them. All his thoughts currently are of YHWH and of YHWH’s true people, His ‘holy ones’, to him the two most important things in life.
4 Their sorrows shall be multiplied who hasten after another god; Their drink offerings of blood I will not offer, nor take up their names on my lips.
He spurns the idea of any contact with ‘another’, that is, with any of ‘the gods’ whose names he will not take on his lips. Those who give gifts to such gods or who exchange YHWH for another god, will have their sorrows multiplied. As for him he will not offer to such gods drink offerings of blood or even take their name on his lips (he has assiduously avoided doing so here. They are nonentities).
‘The drink offerings of blood’ may refer to drink offerings offered with child sacrifices which certainly occurred elsewhere in connection with the worship of Molech (Isaiah 57.5-6), or it may be that drink offerings of blood were made to some gods, or it may refer to drink offerings made by men of violence. Or he may simply be saying that their drink offerings are so detestable that they may be likened to offering the forbidden blood for the god to drink.
5 O LORD, You are the portion of my inheritance and my cup; You maintain my lot. 6 The lines have fallen to me in pleasant places; Yes, I have a good inheritance.
Rather than drink offerings of blood the psalmist delights in what YHWH has bestowed on him by giving him Himself. YHWH Is all to him. It is YHWH of Whom he wants to enjoy (John 6.35). It is YHWH Who Is his portion. And he rejoices in the fact that YHWH has indeed graciously given Himself fully to him. He Is the psalmist’s lot, better than his inheritance in the land, He Is his all, so that he wants no other. And what is more His faithful God Is the One Who maintains that lot for the psalmist by maintaining his position and their relationship constantly. Thus, the psalmist can continually delight in YHWH, and that is all he wants to do. It is a goodly heritage, better than any physical inheritance in the land, and means that his lines (the lines marking off his lot) have fallen to him in pleasant places. They have separated him off to God. So, to the psalmist YHWH is all.
7 I will bless the LORD who has given me counsel; My heart also instructs me in the night seasons.
And with the joy of having YHWH as his lot, and of His possession of so goodly a heritage, he can also rejoice in the wisdom and guidance given to him by YHWH as he lies in his bed at night. Along with all his other benefits he blesses YHWH for the counsel given to him. His ‘reins’, those things which guide and control him, his conscience and the voice of God, give him his instruction night by night to maintain his continuing fellowship with God.
Happy are those whose lot is so in God, and who are experiencing having their lines set in pleasant places as they walk with Him, wanting no other inheritance, and who nightly so receive wisdom from God that their daily walk with Him continues untarnished. For they too will have the joy of the psalmist.
8 I have set the LORD always before me; Because He is at my right hand I shall not be moved. 9 Therefore my heart is glad, and my glory rejoices; My flesh also will rest in hope. 10 For You will not leave my soul in Sheol, nor will You allow Your Holy One to see corruption. 11 You will show me the path of life; In Your presence is fullness of joy; At Your right hand are pleasures forevermore.
The psalmist’s joy in God is such that he desires that it go on forever (verse 11), and he is confident that it will do so. And to that end he has set YHWH always before him. He meditates day and night in His word (1.2-3). He walks with Him by faith (Genesis 5.22). He looks constantly to Him. And because YHWH stands at his right hand as his mighty Champion, (as a king’s champion would stand at his king’s right hand) he knows that nothing can disturb him or remove him from YHWH’s presence. But while it may be a walk of faith, it is not a dreamy faith, it is a positive, responsive faith as genuine faith must be, faith that produces a glorious life. And because he is there in YHWH’s presence he knows that he will not be moved. He will remain there constantly.
This gives him great gladness of heart. ‘Therefore, my heart is glad, and my glory rejoices.’ His ‘heart’ represents his will, mind and emotions, his ‘glory’ the spiritual life within him, made in the image and likeness of the Blessed Holy Trinity (Genesis 1.26-27). It is the latter especially which makes man glorious. So, both his heart and his spirit (his glory) rejoice within him in what YHWH is to him. His spiritual emotion and ecstasy are rapidly expanding.
When he thinks of the coldness and darkness of the grave with all it involves of worm-eaten bodies, of lifelessness, of dankness, of emptiness and especially of the horror of ‘uncleanness’ and God-forsakenness, he knows instinctively that YHWH must somehow preserve him from it. He can surely not allow him, as one of God’s holy ones, as the anointed of YHWH, as separated to YHWH by His covenant love, and faithful to Him, to see such corruption. There is undoubtedly an awareness here that he is seen as a holy one (both one set apart in holiness to YHWH, and one beloved of YHWH and devout, separated and faithful) and that because he is such ‘a holy one’ YHWH will give him a long life, and keep him from an early grave, and from early corruption.
There is in fact clearly so much more in David’s mind. The grave eventually creeps up on us all. Eventually we do all see corruption of our physical bodies. But David would hardly go into such ecstasies about a few short years of life, even though it would be with God, if that were to be its end. It would almost be to come down from his high level to the trite and mundane. Rather he is at this time of ecstasy so conscious of YHWH and His presence with him, and of what God has wrought in him, that he is confident at this moment that as God’s ‘holy one’ he is beyond all corruption, that the grave has no hold on him, that he can never finally die and perish and suffer corruption.
There is that in him which is beyond ‘corruption’, which is incorruptible, that which is bound up with God. For God must surely see His anointed, separated one and somehow deliver him from the after effects of death. It must be so, for he is holy, set apart totally to Him. He is YHWH’s ‘holy one’, His anointed. And what is YHWH’s is so holy, and so without blemish and so whole, that it is set apart from the profane world and all that is profane, including the grave with its uncleanness.
We must not see this as a thought-out doctrine but as something arising from his there and then experience of God, in the ecstasy of beholding YHWH. At this time, and as placed on record for ever, he was confident that he would somehow live on with God, free from corruption, although in an undefined way. For him an end in Sheol was out of the equation. And what would be true for him he would see as true also for such of his sons who were anointed and faithful to God, for they too would be God’s anointed.
‘You will show me the path of life. In your presence is fullness of joy, in your right hand there are pleasures for evermore.’ There is an eternal ring to this. He feels that, rather than having to face his end in death, life awaits him, continuing in this life and beyond, a life of joy and abounding in delights. YHWH will show him the path of continuous life, conquering death. And in YHWH’s presence he will find fullness of joy continually. Yes, at His right hand, as His chosen one, His anointed, he will find everlasting pleasure and delights that will never end.
So in the ecstasy of the moment, and of his poetic and divine inspiration, David has been lifted up into a new sphere, the thought that for those who walk with God, and especially for him as God’s anointed one, death cannot be the final end. It would be to soil that holy relationship, and to soil what has been made holy, something no longer contaminated by a profane creation, and was the inward human equivalent of the furniture in the Tabernacle which could not be touched by earthiness. So inevitably God and they must go on forever.
