Summary
Guest speaker Rev. Jon Hollifield walks through Psalm 16, emphasizing the theme of hope amidst life's struggles and the reality of death. He highlights that true hope is not a mere wish but a settled assurance in God's promises. The sermon encourages believers to find their refuge in God, who provides security, counsel, and contentment, ultimately leading to joy in His presence. Hollifield concludes by affirming that Christ is our hope in both life and death.
Welcome and Introduction
Thank you for listening to Pleasant Grove Baptist Church Sermon Audio. For more information, please visit our website, pgbcronda.com, or visit on all social media platforms. All right, you can take your Bibles and turn to Psalm 16. As James said, we have been friends for our lives, for pretty much our entire lives.
We've known each other. He was about two years behind me, and I went to college, and then he came out to college with me, and we both found our wives there at college and did the same thing there.
We married way above our station in that, and so we are still thankful for our wives and have stayed close ever since and done many things together.
So anytime, I still have family in North Carolina, so anytime we make it out here, we make an attempt to see James, and so it's wonderful.
This is my second time visiting here with you at Pleasant Grove, and so it's just a joy to see God use him in ministry and see this church, and so we're very thankful for the Lord's ministry to you.
And so I'm going to jump right into this this morning because at our church,
our church is Grace Community Church in Manchester, Tennessee, and we normally go about two hours, and so I want to be respectful of your time this morning. I don't preach two hours,
but our services are pretty long, so I want to be respectful of your time, so let's jump into this this morning in Psalm 16. When you think about life,
the choir just sang Christ, our hope, and life and death, and when you think about life, you think about death, life has with it many struggles.
You don't have to live too long or see too many years and realize that life is not easy.
And I preached this message at our church when I recognized that there were some things going on in many of our people that were just having some hard times, just struggles throughout the week and different types of things.
I'm a counselor, a biblical counselor, so I was counseling a guy at one point, and we went to Psalm 1611 and was looking at the truth in that, and so I thought this would be a message. I decided to dive into the chapter and preach to our church as a message of encouragement
because life brings struggles. I don't know about your situations. James has not, we haven't had a whole lot of time here to talk, and we like to talk about our people, but I don't know if there's situations going on right now this morning, but I trust the Lord in this text, but life does bring struggles.
It appears we, a lot of times, we don't have the answers to these problems. That tends to make the struggles even harder, does it not? Whenever we're going through these things and we wish we just had the thing figured out, what the approach to take or what to do,
Confronting the Reality of Death
then there's always the present reality that death is real.
We don't like to talk about it. We don't like to think about it. We try to avoid it as much as we can, but every now and again, life hits us right in the face with the reality that death is imminent for all of us. It is a part of it,
and death is there. And so when you take the struggle of life, and you take the reality and the confrontation that we have with death, and you look at these two things, I think that we find the very ingredient, the very medicine,
the very treatment that God has given us for those two things in this life, and that is what you just sung about, hope. Hope.
But here's the thing. Before we jump into this, I want to real quickly just tweak maybe your understanding of hope.
Because I feel like that we have a secular understanding of hope, that hope, when we use the word hope, we tend to think of it in this way of like a wish idea, a wish concept. Well, you know, I hope this happens,
as if we don't know if it's going to happen, but we'd like for it to happen. We hope that it'll happen.
However, church, this morning, if I could get you to understand this concept, that is not the biblical, or if I could say it this way, the Christian understanding of hope. See, the biblical understanding of hope is that which is a belief based on a settled assurance.
It is this. For example, you don't wish that Christ will return one day.
You just don't know if he will. Right? That's not our hope. We know he's coming. It is a knowledge and assurance that we know this will happen.
So when we take that hope and then apply it to life, are we applying that settled assurance of hope in Christ and life,
or do we hear truths or hear the preaching of God's word or listen to great Christian songs, and we say that's nice in our everyday situation, but I just don't know. Has it become a wish aspect or a settled knowledge of assurance?
Thomas Brooks is a Puritan. He said this, Hope can see heaven through the thickest clouds.
Hope can see heaven through the thickest clouds. Let's read this psalm together. We're going to read these 11 verses. Psalm 16, verse 1, down through verse 11. Preserve me, O God, for in you I put my trust. O my soul, you have said to the Lord, You are my Lord.
My goodness is nothing apart from you. As for the saints who are on the earth, they are the excellent ones in whom is all my delight.
Exploring Psalm 16 Background
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. O Lord, You are the portion of my inheritance and my cup.
You maintain my lot. The lines have fallen to me in pleasant places. Yes, I have a good inheritance.
I will bless the Lord who has given me counsel. My heart also instructs me in the night seasons.
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 rejoices. My flesh also will rest in hope.
For You will not leave my soul to Sheol. Nor will You allow Your Holy One to see corruption. You will show me the path of life. And Your presence is fullness of joy. At Your right hand are pleasures forevermore.
This psalm, a little bit of background about this psalm. It was written by David. David, but to be honest, all of the research we've done, we don't quite understand or know what the circumstances were.
Many psalms, you can say, well, this was the psalm that David wrote whenever Saul was chasing him. Or this psalm that David wrote whenever Absalom had taken over the kingdom and ran him out of Jerusalem. We don't exactly know 100% what was going on in David's life when he wrote this psalm.
But we do believe, as it's evident from the text, that David was going through something. He was struggling with something in his life.
The Hebrew poetic structure of this psalm reveals a flow of the text that goes like this. Verses 1-4, you have confidence in the Lord. Verses 5-6, you have the experience of faith. Verses 7-8, you have confidence in the Lord.
Verses 9-11, you have experience in faith. Because here's the thing that we run into in life a lot of times as Christians. We come to church on Sunday, we have confidence in the Lord, but our experience tends to bring us down low. To where we get to that attitude of,
I just can't wait to Sunday so I can get that boost. Now here's what my goal into counseling Christians and pastoring our churches is this. I wish for your Christian life that you're not living that way.
That that confidence in the Lord is actually carrying you through Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday.
That you look forward to the meeting worship on Sunday because you get to rejoice with the saints together and fellowship with the saints together. But it's not looking to it because you need that boost.
But you are actually having your soul nurtured by God and the Holy Spirit through every day of the week.
Themes of Trust and Affection
This psalm has features of a prayer psalm, a hymn of joy that focuses on the goodness of the Lord, but it is most likely a psalm of trust. The theme is one of having your affections centered on God. So let's jump into this. Number one, number one, the psalmist's honest conversations.
The psalmist's honest conversations in verses one through four. He starts off by saying this, preserve me, preserve me. This means to protect, to keep, to guard, to watch over.
Why is that a cry from the psalmist's heart when he says this? Well, obviously, because he was going through something in his life, whether inner turmoil or outside oppression that was coming at him, that he knew he needed God to keep him, to guard him, to protect him in those moments.
He says, preserve me, oh God. And then he says this, he says, in you I put my trust.
The Hebrew wording of this phrase has actually changed in some different translations and it says this, in you I take refuge. That's the idea. That's the concept.
Before we move on to that, let me ask you this. Think about that for a second. This is one of the major issues I deal most often with people in counseling. What is a refuge?
Think about that for a second. What is a refuge? A refuge is something that you run to for protection.
A refuge is something that you run to for safety. A refuge is something that you go to for comfort. A refuge is where you feel comfort. You feel safe.
So many things we tend to build up in our lives that that is our safe place if you will. That is our refuge. But where should it be? As the psalmist said, it should be God.
It should not be in some type of leisure. It should not be in some type of entertainment. It should not be a sport. It should not be a person. A family member.
A spouse. It should not be a bottle. It should not be a drug. A pill. Or whatever it is that you run to. But your refuge in life when the heat presses down should always be God.
Spurgeon said this. Charles Spurgeon, the great Baptist forefather. He says, Let us when buffeted by storms write, bravely cry to the Lord as He did. In you I take refuge.
Refuge. So the psalmist talks to God. He says, Preserve me, O God, and you have put my trust or you are my refuge. Then he talks to his soul. You may not see this right but I want to see if I can pull this out so you can understand this real quickly.
Speaking Truth to the Soul
O my soul, you have said to the Lord, you are my Lord. My goodness is nothing apart from you.
What is he saying here? He says, I'm speaking to God but what does he say first? First, he's talking to himself. This is a huge deal that we don't really understand many times. Who talks to you the most in your life? No one talks to you more than yourself.
No one, let me say this, no one builds you up more than yourself. But the reverse is true. No one is more of a harsher critic to you than yourself.
So, what happens when we go through those struggles? What happens, what do we do? Alright?
See, a lot of times whenever we're talking to somebody about whatever struggle we're going through, whether it's a financial thing, whether it's a family member doing this, or whatever it is, we tend to talk to somebody about that
and they just don't quite get it, right? They're thinking, yeah, that would be hard
but they're trying to encourage you and you just feel they're not getting it. Why is that? Because they're not inside your head. Because they haven't blown it up bigger
than what it is. They haven't ventured into the future to see all of the negative outcomes that could have possibly come that you've already done up here. They have not
accused you already like you do many times in your head that this is happening because you did this, this is happening because this, and playing out all of the different scenarios that we tend to do in our own mind. But what are we doing when we do that? We are talking to ourselves.
We're speaking to ourselves. See, the psalmist understands this. What does David do? He knows the danger of continuing to do that in his situation so what does he do?
He stops speaking to himself in those unbiblical ways and he says the answer or the remedy for this negative or this unbiblical self-talk is to talk to myself and reclaim or reintroduce to myself who God is.
It is a coming back to face to face with God because look what he says. He says this, you have said to the Lord. Now your English translations translate these two words Lord, Lord. They're two totally different names.
The first one is the covenant name of God. You know many other religions, they have their God, they say Buddha is our God or Allah is our God. You understand that Christians,
the name of our God is not God. You understand that, right? Our God's name is Yahweh.
And so this is what he says. You, this is what he's literally saying in verse two, you have said to Yahweh,
you are my Adonai. That's the word translated Lord in the second part. He's saying you have said to Yahweh, so he's talking specifically to God, to our God, to Yahweh, and he says you are my Adonai. What is he declaring? Adonai is the name for God that reveals his sovereign majesty, his kingly authority over all things.
He's saying this, whatever has happened in my life, I have said to Yahweh, I know you are in control because you are Adonai. You are over this.
therefore, I know that you can preserve me, you can take care of me, you are in control, and therefore, if you have allowed this, you are wise to know you're working something for good in this situation.
That was where his confidence was. That was where his hope in life was being placed. Now continue on. Psalmist talks to people, verse three through four.
As for the saints who are on the earth, they are the excellent ones in whom he delights.
He claims the saints with whom he has identified and denounces the idolaters with whom he avoids. So he gives an encouragement to the saints. What does he say? He says, you are the excellent ones in whom is all my delight. Don't miss that. Your God takes delight in your worship.
He delights in you. But then, he doesn't just do that. He also reveals the antithesis of it. Look at verse four. What is verse four there? 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. This is a very scathing denunciation of idolatry, of idol worshipers.
He says this. He says, their sorrows shall multiply. Multiplied gods or idols will bring multiplied sorrows.
See, we often hear idolatry and idols preached from our scriptures and we think, we don't do that. We don't have little statues made up in our homes.
but even at that, when you go through the Old Testament, you find in Ezekiel the main problem was not even with the statues because Ezekiel criticizes the people of Israel because they had left God for the idols of their heart.
When you go to the New Testament, you see that God is primarily dealing with the issues of their heart and idolatry is something that we will always be battling with because we are made to worship and there is always this competition for our heart to go and worship something other than God.
So what is it that is erected in your life that brings your affections away from God? Could it be an activity? Could it be a person?
Could it be your country? Could it be a bottle? A status? A position? A job?
This is one of the ways to figure out whether you've made something an idol in your life. A couple of questions to ask yourself. Am I willing to sin to keep it? Am I willing to sin in order to get it?
You start thinking in your mind, what if this thing was removed from my life but God left all of these other things? Would I be okay?
Yeah, it would hurt but would I be okay in God? God, then you'll start to identify where an idol may have been erected in your life. So he gets them for that.
And then in number two, this is, I know I'm going quickly here, the psalmist talks to, let me make sure that I'm not used to the fill in the blanks so let me help you here.
God as Our Provision
He talks to his soul, he talks to his people, we come to number two, the psalmist's present blessings in verses five through eight. He says first, Yahweh is my provision in verse number five. Yahweh is my provision.
He says, oh Lord, you are the portion of my inheritance, my cup, you maintain my life. Now again, what is he doing?
In the midst of the struggle of life that he's in, he is reminding himself and going back to the well of what? Who God is and what God has done.
So he's already proclaimed who God is in his covenant name and in his title of Adonai.
Now he's going to talk about and remind himself of what God has done. This is why worship music is so good because it reminds us of these things that God has done in our lives when we are going through life's hardships.
He says, you are my portion, my inheritance and my cup, you maintain my lot. Alan Ross said, whatever that Yahweh gave to him was made secure by Yahweh himself. It is God who holds it. He grasps it. He maintains it and makes it secure with his special care. Get this. There is nothing
God cannot provide and there is nothing anyone else can provide that God has not already provided.
You need to grab a hold of that about your God and that will put a stop on a lot of the things that we think that we are getting from these other people or other things that we erect as idols in our life. Next, in verse 6, he says, Yahweh is my contentment.
The lines have fallen to me in pleasant places. Yes, I have a good inheritance. What is he saying?
The provision that he's given me, this is a big thing in Jewish culture about the tribe you were from.
Where were the lines your landlines are? Where was your property lines at for your tribe?
And what land do you have? That was huge in their culture of blessing and wealth. And what does he say here? He says, the lines have fallen to me in pleasant places.
I have a good inheritance. What does that show you? He's content with what he has.
The more that I go in ministry and the more that I work with people and counsel people, the more and more that I realize what a devastating issue we have in contentment and discontentment in our lives. The psalmist is content with what God has meted out to him.
There is no cure for discontentment except in God. And then Yahweh is my counsel. Verse number seven. I will bless the Lord who has given me counsel. My heart also instructs me in the night seasons.
My heart here, the psalmist uses the actual word, the Hebrew term here, is literally my kidneys. Okay?
My kidneys. Now this is part of our Americanized culture that we have to misunderstanding some of the language in the Bible because we have a Disney-fied idea of the heart. Right? When we get those feelings towards someone
you know, that we like, you know, we say, my heart is just full. That's not how the Bible speaks of it. The Bible actually
refers to it exactly how it is. It's actually whenever it uses language like my bowels. But see, that doesn't sound very romantic in our American culture. It's like, hey, you know, I love you, honey. You make my tumbly rumbly. You know?
We don't speak like that. But this is what the Bible uses because the heart is actually used to as the center of the being, the mind, will, the actions, the control center of life, and therefore the emotions that come out of that is
normally referred to by the actual internal organs that are actually in there.
And so the word he's using here that we translate in English, heart, is the word for kidneys. The heart is often used for the translation, the visceral organs for the spiritual capacities, and so we classify them like this.
The heart and the liver are most frequently used, but the kidneys often refer to this in Hebrew poetry, the conscience. the conscience. So read that again with that understanding. He said, I will bless the Lord who has given me counsel, my conscience instructs me in the night season.
I have a whole message that I preach on about the conscience, one of the forgotten virtues that is taught in scripture. But you need to listen to your conscience. You realize that a lot of times in churches people have confused the Holy Spirit and the conscience as the same thing.
They're not the same thing. Every single person born has a conscience.
Every single person born again has the Holy Spirit. You following me? Okay, that thing that gets you whenever you're doing something and like tells you that you're, that's wrong,
that actually isn't always what you're thinking is the Holy Spirit. It's your conscience. And it's a very dangerous thing to say no to your conscience when your conscience is convicting you, speaking to you. Okay? The Holy Spirit guides you.
The Holy Spirit ministers to you. It brings and illuminates the truth of God's word to you. The Holy Spirit comforts you.
That accusatory thing that comes up and says no, no, no, that convicting thing is the conscience and you can silence your conscience. Paul tells us to Timothy, those whose consciences are seared with a hot iron.
You familiar with that passage? Because the more and more you do the thing that you know you shouldn't do, what ends up happening?
You stop feeling bad about it. That was actually the big proponent of the secular psychologist Sigmund Freud.
He believed that people that had guilt feelings, it was false guilt and they just needed to continue to do that action until they didn't feel guilty about it anymore regardless of what it was. Of course, that guy hated God
actually set up his practice on Sundays to be a counter to the church. That is not what the Bible teaches.
It's actually a sin to go against your conscience. I actually did not intend to spend that much time on the conscience but let's continue on. Yahweh is my conscience and Yahweh is, verse 6 and verse 8, Yahweh is my security. Yahweh is my security.
He says, verse 8, I have set the Lord always before me and because he is at my right hand I shall not be moved.
The point is his security is with the Lord. With the Lord defending him he is not going to be uprooted or cast out. He is not saying that he will never face adversity if Yahweh is present in his life but he is saying that divine protection brings him the confidence that he is secure. Yahweh is his security.
So he is your provision, he is your contentment, he is your counsel, and he is your security. Are you seeing these factors about God? Do you believe these factors about God? Because this is where you place your hope. This is the beef,
if you will. This is the substance of your hope. You're not hoping in nothing. You know and believe this that this is what the word of God has revealed to you about your God and so that is where your hope is based in and the truth of that.
Hope Strengthened Through Experience
And in your lived experience you find out as you go through life and you go through things you see God did that. God provided. God helped there. And it does what? It strengthens that hope. So your hope is in Christ. So, verse 9 through 11, the psalmist's future hope.
Hope in life, verse number 9. Therefore, because of all of these things that he knows about God, his heart is glad and his glory and my glory rejoices,
my flesh will also do what? And hope. He has now gotten to the point because he sees God this way that he doesn't have to actively try to hope. What is he doing now? He rests.
Because isn't that the way when you're going about it and your life struggles? When that phone call comes, you don't feel rest. What is the opposite of rest? You feel anxiety, don't you?
You feel tension. But what did he find after giving this entire just bath or shower in the knowledge of God? Rest. He rested in his hope. Hope in death, verses 10 through 11.
For you will not leave my soul in shale, nor will you allow your Holy One to see corruption. You will show me the path of life and your presence is fullness of joy. At your right hand are pleasures forevermore.
I'm not going to go into it, but this is actually used, this passage is preached by Peter and used by Paul in the New Testament by Peter in Acts chapter 2.
And it actually brings us an understanding of what David is saying here, that this is a messianic psalm, that he is actually talking about Christ.
This is why the title of the message was Christ, our hope in life and death. Because Christ is the fulfillment of God.
He is the, he is God revealed to mankind. So therefore, Christ is our hope in life and death.
So he has hope in life, hope in death, and then the last part of verse 8, I wanted to do this and then we'll finish up this morning. Hope in God. God's presence. Now think about it with me here.
You start at verse 1, and if your thoughts and your mind and your heart is God-centered, preserve me, oh God. You are Yahweh, my covenant God. You are Adonai. You have provided for me. You have counseled me. You have, you have, I am content in you. You are keeping me safe.
You are all of these things. You are with me. I have set you before me. I am in you. Then what?
What are you doing whenever you're doing that? You're listening to that. You're repeating that to you.
You're reading these scriptures. You're listening to worship music that brings you to God. What are you doing? You're sitting in his presence. You're sitting in his presence. Now, get this about God. He's omnipresent, right?
There's nowhere that he's not. What is the problem then? The problem is not God's presence with us. It is us being present with him. So, what are we doing whenever we get this God-centered in our heart and thinking? We have entered God's presence. Now, watch the result.
What does he say? In your presence is what? Fullness of joy and pleasures forevermore.
I told you that I got into this first while counseling someone. The person I was counseling was struggling with pornography addiction. What is the problem with that? It is seeking pleasures in a very aberrant way, in a very unbiblical way, in a very sinful way. But wait a second.
Let's not look down on somebody like that per se real quickly. How many times it may not be that sin, but how many times do we seek pleasure in other places other than God? So watch this.
When we are going to God this way and he has become this in our lives, what happens? We're fulfilled. We're content. We have pleasures in him forevermore. That desire has shifted.
The desire for this egregious sin has shifted to a desire for him and the desire for him is much more powerful that it wins out and you find yourself growing in your sanctification and you say, you know what? I didn't want to.
I didn't want to. And you're thinking, how is this possible? It's because you're resting in God. You're finding your hope
in Christ and life and death. Let me, I know we sung it, but let me finish this morning with this.
Here's the lyrics to this song. Let me read them to you. We sung them this morning, but let me read them to you. What is our hope in life and death? It's a great question, is it not? It's a question we've been talking about this morning. What is your hope? Christ alone.
Christ alone. Now, the song doesn't make that the question, but maybe that's the question I'm asking you this morning. Is he your hope in life and death? What is our only confidence?
Is your confidence in your bank account? Is your confidence in who is in Washington? Oh, glory. Is your confidence in how much you can control the situation in your home? What is our only confidence? That our souls belong to him. who holds our days within his hand? Can anybody do that?
What comes apart from his command? Nothing. And what will keep us to the end?
The love of Christ in which we stand. Verse 2. What truth can calm the troubled soul?
I mean, there's many voices out there today and I do a lot of research into secular psychology and they are trying and writing books galore with every answer they can to calm your troubled soul. But what truth can calm it? What does it say? God is good. God is good.
Where is his grace and goodness known? in our great Redeemer's blood? Question. Who holds our faith when fears arise? Who stands above the stormy trial? Who sends the waves that bring us nigh unto the shore? The rock of Christ. And then we talk about death. Unto the grave. What shall we sing? Christ.
He lives. Christ. He lives. And what reward will heaven bring? Ever lasting life with him. Oh, sing hallelujah. Our hope springs eternal. Now and ever we confess Christ our hope
Closing Prayer and Reflection
life and death. Let's pray. Father, thank you so much for your word. I thank you for, I don't know what the struggle was that was going through David's life. But I am so thankful that you brought about so much good from his struggle. people.
And so as the saints have gone through the last 2,000 years since the cross, many have struggled with different issues, many have gone through different trials and hardships, and you have always remained faithful through it all. So here today, as we are here gathered, we look to you, our covenant God,
our Adonai, and we are setting you before our eyes to see Christ as our hope, that thing that we know and rest assured upon, not only in death, but also in life, in everyday life. Oh God, we love you, and we give you the praise and glory in Jesus' name. Amen.
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