The Golden Secret: Finding Refuge and Joy in God

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I'm 16. Keep me safe, my God, for in you I take refuge.

I say to the Lord, you are my Lord.

Apart from you, I have no good thing.

I say the holy people who are in the land, They are the noble ones in whom is all my delight.

Those who run after other gods will suffer more and more.

I will not pour out libations of blood to such gods or take up their names on my lips.

Lord, you alone are my portion and my cup. You make 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 keep my eyes always on the Lord.

With him at my right hand I will not be shaken.

Therefore, my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices. My body also will rest secure,

because you will not abandon me to the realm of the dead, nor will you let your faithful one see decay.

You make known to me the path of life.

You will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand.

This is the word of the Lord. If you have a Bible, we are looking this morning at Psalm 16.

You might remember it from earlier in the service as well.

Psalm 16, as we continue our series through this idea of together in prayer,

this idea of God has given us the opportunity to speak and communicate to him.

Yet for so many of us, it's a difficult thing.

For so many of us, we need all of the help and motivation that we can get.

Psalm 16 is a great source of motivation when it comes to prayer.

Psalm 16, I actually learned this week, has been known at various times as the

golden secret, which I think is the coolest chapter name in all of the Bible,

Psalm 16, the golden secret.

And I think as I speak today on Psalm 16, as we reflect on the words that are found in there,

that not only will we be helped in terms of our prayer, but also I hope this

morning that the value that we place on the refuge, the safety,

the comfort in God, that our value on that would be increased as well.

A bit of trivia for you. In the Psalms, there are six Psalms that are known as miktams.

And if you're wondering what a miktam is, the general consensus is we're not totally sure. door.

It's essentially like a lost Hebrew word.

The loosely translated guesses are sort of like either a golden inscription or a golden mystery.

Hence, Psalm 16 got that title as the golden secret.

And this Psalm, this song,

this poem was written by David when he was going through a difficult time,

when he was feeling harassed and when he was being pursued and chased.

It might have been when the Philistines had seized him at Gath.

A lot of people think that this may have actually been when he was,

one of the times that he was fleeing from Saul and that he found himself in

a cave fearing for his life.

We don't know the exact circumstances that occasioned the writing of Psalm 16,

but we do know that David was under great pressure.

And what I know is that many of us regularly find ourselves in circumstances

where we feel like we are under great pressure.

And so like David, this is a Psalm that we too can pray the words of as he says

to God, God, please preserve me. Please keep me safe.

Please look after me. I take refuge in you.

God, just help me. That in my prayer life is actually a regular prayer.

God, please help me. God, please help me.

That's where David was at here as he begins to pray and write Psalm 16.

There are many times in David's life when we simply need to and want to cry

out to God, please help me.

When we feel like David would have felt like in a different Psalm,

in Psalm 55, when he wrote, oh, that I had the wings of a dove,

I would fly away and I would be at rest.

I would flee far away and stay in the desert. I would hurry to my place of shelter

far away from this tempest and storm.

I wonder if you have ever felt like that. I wonder if you've ever felt like,

I just want to get out of here.

I just want to get as far away from the problem, the stress,

the anxiety that is going on for you.

I wonder if you've ever felt like, I just want to run. I just want to fly.

I just want to get out of here.

Perhaps for many of us this morning, there is a challenge that you are going

through right now. something that's causing you stress right now, tense, tension.

You can feel it in your body, even as you're sitting here at church.

That thing in your life is causing you issues right now.

Well, if that's true, Psalm 16, I think, won't just be like a go home, oh yeah, I'll pray more.

But perhaps as we see David's mindset here, it might inspire our mindsets in

easy times as well as hard times, because the mood in this psalm,

even though David is saying the words,

keep me safe, the mood somehow is of joy and contentment, which leaves you thinking

to yourself, what is this guy's secret?

How can he be going through such a tough thing, yet appear like he's got it all together.

Viktor Frankl, in his classic work, Man's Search for Meaning.

He describes how he survived the Holocaust.

And he describes how he survived not just physically, but how he got through

all of that trauma emotionally and spiritually.

And the recurring sort of famous quote from his book is the line that he who

has a why to live can bear almost anyhow.

He who has a why to live can bear almost anyhow.

A person who has found real purpose in life can overcome any obstacle and there

should be no people on earth more than the people of the the church, who have faith in Jesus,

who follow Jesus, there is no bigger why.

So what was David's secret? What was his why that enabled him to bear the how

that he was going through?

Well, when we examine what's going on here, how he's able to maintain his composure

and his sort of affection towards God, which by the way, there are plenty of Psalms when he doesn't.

What we see is that in this moment, David does something that modern psychologists recommend,

which is to try and access some genuine gratitude for the positive things that are in your life.

Not a fake or a forced type of gratitude of listing off the obvious things,

but he accesses here a genuine gratitude. Gratitude.

And some of the things that he expresses gratitude for, you can only imagine

are things that he would never have planned for, that he would never have wanted,

things that he would never have wished for.

But he now finds in this moment that somehow he is genuinely thankful for those things.

I wonder in your life, what are the things that you didn't plan on,

The things that weren't on the cards for you, the things, if you were to map

out, you know, your life or your current five or 10 year plan,

the things that have just not just popped up, but stormed in and become not

just a background feature, but sort of the main thing.

What's the things that you didn't plan for?

And I wonder if you were to look back into your life, what are the things in

your life that you didn't want to happen or perhaps didn't go the way that you perhaps thought,

that now on reflection, you think, it's not what I wanted to happen,

but I'm thankful now that I see how all the parts fit together and what it is.

I wonder what those things are that you are thankful for.

Well, in verse 2, David says to God, you are my Lord, and apart from you, I have no good thing.

David is saying, in effect, without you, God, even if I have everything else

in the world, I have nothing.

But with you, I don't need anything else because everything good comes from

you anyway. I have all I need.

And next in verse 3, what he does is he reminds himself self that he's not alone.

We know that David at times felt dreadfully alone.

And I don't know about you, but I know in my life, the times that I start to

feel like the world's coming against me or everything's going wrong,

for some reason, that's when the self-sabotage kicks in and you convince yourself

that even the people that are for you, you can be tempted to start to push them

away or to think that they don't get it.

David stops himself here and says, I'm not doing that. Yes, there is a lot against me.

However, I am surrounded by some people who get me, some people who love me,

some people who are with me and on my side.

At times, it may have just been one or two. He may have been in that cave and

there may have just been as many who could fit in that cave and who were there

because they loved him and valued him.

And he reminds himself that he does have some people.

And he calls them, though, the saints that are in the land, the glorious ones

whom is all my delight, essentially for him, fellow believers who were there for him.

Really, as a church, that's what we should be trying to foster is that as a community,

we would have people here who are willing to get into that cave with us,

who are willing to be our ally,

who are willing to be our helper.

Every single one of us needs an ally. Every single one of us needs somebody

who is for us, that has our back, someone who gives us the benefit of the doubt,

someone who will stand with us and someone who will stand for us.

And so David here reminds himself, I do have some people.

I hope that you this morning in the times that you think about the times that

you've gone through, or even if right now, when you're tempted to think there's no one with me,

I hope you know this morning that there are people with you,

that there are people in this building that have your back,

that that's the aspiration as a church that we aim for, that that's what we're

trying to build here is a place you walk in and we all have each other's back.

We might not always agree. We might have different personalities and different things that happen.

But ultimately, as a church family, that's what we aim for.

David reminds himself that he has people.

And then in verse five and six, and verse five and six is the main show for me this morning.

I think in verse five and six, he does something which I think warrants the

title of the golden secret. It's the golden secret of Psalm 16.

It's in verse five and six. It's the goal that I think perhaps will motivate

all of us this morning towards more prayer, deeper prayer, more meaningful prayer. Yeah.

David reminds himself of his delightful inheritance.

In the Old Testament, the Israelites were apportioned land in Canaan.

And so David's family would have got a portion, a bit of land from the tribal land.

And David, as we should remember, was no firstborn son.

He was an eighth eighth son, which means that David's allotment in normal circumstances

would have been not much.

And there were times in his life, including when he's writing this,

that he wasn't even able to be in his little allotment.

He had to flee for his life, flee from his home in order to save his life.

But then David says here, Lord, you've assigned me my portion and my cup.

You've made my lot secure.

The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places.

Catch that. Lord, you've assigned me my portion and my cup. You've made my lot secure.

The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places.

And there are some words there. The word portion is an interesting one.

One of my favorite phrases that you find in scripture is that God is my portion.

And what is portion? Portion is, it's your share.

It's your serving on a plate. It's how much in this world you get.

It's your life. It's your little bit that you carve out of the years that you

have in the world that we have, your portion is your serving.

And David says, you've given my portion. He sort of, if you talk about in like

the food type of idea, he says, I don't need to worry about what's for dinner.

You've put some stuff on my plate and I know that you're good.

And he says, my cup, you've given me as well.

And in these sorts of verses, when it talks about cup, cup, it represents life.

It represents your inner being, your feeling of life.

So when your cup is empty, you feel sad, you're down, there's not much going for you.

Sometimes though in life, we can feel like our cup is full and even overflowing.

And then David says here that the boundary lines of his life have fallen in

pleasant places, which makes no sense because Because he is in a cave hiding for his life.

The boundary lines for us represent the life circumstances that we've been dealt.

And David, in this moment anyway, has not been dealt good cards.

Saul is most likely after him. The one that commands the army has said he's got to die.

He's running for his life.

Yet he says to God, I'm content with the life that you've given me. He says, it's my life.

And so for David, instead of being envious of how the boundary lines have fallen

for other people, he decides to see God as his portion.

He decides to trust God. He decides to turn his focus and his contentment towards

the creator of the universe.

And I'm not sure for anyone here who who grew up with siblings,

whether you can relate to getting hostile very quickly when you perceive that

your version of boundary lines when you were growing up were not drawn up totally fairly.

I wonder if you can relate to getting hostile very quick in those sorts of circumstances.

Maybe the sibling or siblings, they got something you didn't.

Maybe they got to stay up later. Maybe Maybe they got to watch more TV.

Maybe their room was bigger. Maybe their section of the room was starting to

take up a little too much space.

Maybe they got to sit in the front seat of the car. I lived with my younger

sister for the first 12 years of my life.

And I fought for every inch in those 12 years of my life, at least the 10 years

that she decided to come along and be part of that.

And I remember that if there was ever any occasion where my mom made some nice

food, I have a memory deep in my brain of my mom saying when this would happen, yes,

you can have it to my sister and I, but you have to let it cool down first and

then you have to share it.

I do not exaggerate or tell even the slightest of a lie when I say that when

my mom would say something like this in regards to whatever the food that had

been left on the bench ready for my sister and I to have,

I tell no exaggeration that my sister and I had a ritual where we went to my mom's desk,

we grabbed the 30 centimeter ruler,

we took it to the kitchen, and

we would measure, whether it was a pie or a pizza or a cookie or a cake,

we were always going to make sure that the other person did not even have a

millimeter more than what we were going to get.

So instead of us sharing something that had been generously given to both of us,

What we did was we turned

each other into rivals and competitors Over something that there was plenty

of for both of us And we turned each other into rivals and competitors Over

millimetres of chocolate Which is ridiculous,

it's absurd But how often in our lives do we get the ruler out and measure how

many millimeters we've got compared to the other people that we know?

How often do we too turn friends, siblings,

even brothers and sisters in Christ into rivals and competitors when we become

envious of what they have,

have when we become not content with how the boundary lines of life have fallen

for us and fallen for them.

And it's so easy to be envious of someone else. We all know that.

We all know that feeling.

Oh, why don't I have that? Oh, why couldn't my life be like that?

Why couldn't my life just have that thing?

And I'm going to list some examples. But before I do, what we need to know is

that envy, amongst many other things that envy is, envy is a distraction.

Envy is a sinister, poisonous distraction that takes us away from the God-given

purpose that we are given every single day,

and it distracts us, and it makes us think about those millimeters.

And envy is commanded against in the Ten Commandments.

God views envy as one of the big things that breaks ourselves,

that breaks our relationships with other people, and ultimately and most significantly

breaks our relationship with God.

Yet, we do it, we feel it all the time.

And I think perhaps because of social media, because we see more than we've

ever seen, it's not just what's the neighbor doing out the front,

it's what's the whole world got that I don't have.

Envy, I think, exists at this point of time in history more than it ever has.

And I wonder in your life what you are tempted to be envious of,

because there are some things.

We can envy the success of a friend. We can envy the success of a co-worker.

We can envy somebody else's house. We can envy somebody else's financial position.

We can envy their possessions, their new car. We can envy their talent.

We can envy their looks. We can envy their youth or we can envy their wisdom.

Sometimes we envy people's skills, their friendships, either the depth of them

or the amount they seem to have.

We envy the way they make connections with people and the way that they seem

to get preferential treatment when we are forgotten and underappreciated.

We can envy someone else for being married.

We can envy someone else for having a good marriage. We can envy their spouse.

We can envy that they have children or that they were able to have more children than you.

We can envy the relationship that they have with their kids.

Or we can envy people's relationship that they have with their parents.

We can envy that their parents are still together. and we can envy perhaps sometimes

that their parents are still with us.

We can envy how generous their parents and extended family are.

Sometimes people, I've heard, can envy people's full head of hair.

I don't really. There's another one here that's my trigger one.

We can envy their physique, their height, their athleticism.

We can envy how skinny they are. There we go. That's my one there.

That presses a button. We can envy their spirituality, their faith.

We can even envy their reputation at church. If we know someone from a different

church, and even worse if you are employed by a church, sometimes you can even

envy the size of somebody else's church.

Some youth pastors can envy the size of the other youth pastor's youth group.

We can envy the size of someone's Bible study.

During some of the lockdowns, I did know a pastor or two or ten that envied

how many subscribers and views that other pastors were getting on their church's YouTube.

We can envy other people's holidays, their job, their career,

their promotion, their easy commute, their pay rise.

We can envy when someone doesn't have to work and they can retire.

We can envy that someone is so far ahead of us in life, whatever that means.

We can envy that somebody is so much younger than us, yet they're at the same point that we are.

Again, whatever that means. We can envy someone's stable family.

Their generous parents.

We can envy their large social circle.

We can envy how easy it all comes to them.

And we can become bitter about how hard it all comes to us.

And when we do that, we do what David doesn't do. We turn away from God.

Envy takes us away from God.

We make that that mistake, and it comes so easily to us.

And when we do it, what we do to that person is we simplify them.

We misrepresent them. We project onto them. We project onto them a story that

may or may not be true, a story that is likely far more complex than you know.

And when we do this, we demean the portion that God has given especially to us and for us.

And you know, the scariest thing is that I just listed 40 or so generic envy examples.

And I know for sure that a lot of us would have related to a lot of those examples.

Envy comes for us all. It seeks to take us away from God.

It seeks to ruin our prayer life.

And it seeks to take us away from the purpose that God has given to us.

It seeks to break down our relationship and to consume our thoughts.

In Matthew chapter 20, Jesus tells the parable of the workers in the vineyard.

Matthew 20 · chapter mention

And a shout out to my mom. This is her favorite parable.

Jesus says, the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in

the morning to hire workers for his vineyard.

He agreed to pay them a denarius for the day and sent them into his vineyard.

About nine in the morning, he went out and saw others standing in the marketplace doing nothing.

He told them, you also go and work in my vineyard and I will pay you whatever is right. So they went.

He went out about noon and about three in the afternoon and did the same thing.

About five in the afternoon, he went out and found still others standing around.

He asked them, why have you been standing here all day doing nothing?

Because no one has hired us, they answered. He said to them,

you also go and work in my vineyard.

When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman,

call the workers, pay them their wages, beginning with the last one's hide,

going all the way to the first.

The workers who were hired about five in the afternoon came and each received a denarius.

So when those who were hired first, they expected to receive more,

but each one of them also received a denarius.

When they received it, they began to grumble against the landowner.

Those who were hired last, they only worked one hour and you've made them equal

to us who have borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day.

But he answered one of them, I am not being unfair to you, friend.

Didn't you agree to work for a denarius? Take your pay and go.

I want to give the one who was hired last the same as I gave you.

Don't I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you being

envious because I am generous?

So Jesus said, the last will be first and the first will be last.

The workers who worked all day got a great wage,

a great portion, an awesome portion, which they would have been thrilled with

until someone else had it easier than them.

This parable is about a lot of things, but the lesson is definitely there that

as soon as we notice somebody else's, what do they've got?

We diminish the portion that we've received.

Comparison is the thief of joy, the US president, Teddy Roosevelt, once famously said.

And in Psalm 16, David chose to find within him some genuine gratitude for the

generous payment that he felt like he had.

And he does this even in the midst of adversity.

He comes to God in prayer and he thanks him for placing the boundary lines of

his life in pleasant places.

He's hiding in the depths of a cold, dark cave, and he thanks God for placing

the boundary lines of his life in pleasant places.

He saw his portion as blessed because when he turned himself towards God and

God alone, he saw that he was blessed.

The life that he had was the life that God had given him. It was for him alone.

The workers in the field in Jesus's parable needed to realize that the true

joy wasn't in the coin at the end of the day.

It was that they had the privilege of working with and for the landowner who

in that story represented God.

When we pray like David does in Psalm 16, we are reminded to find satisfaction in God.

Satisfaction in knowing that we are living the life that he's given to us.

He hasn't given it to the person next to you. He hasn't given it to your friend. He's given it to you.

And I think sometimes myself included, perhaps are waiting for a reward of some sort.

Suzanne, I haven't checked with you, but I'm just going to give you a small plug here.

I listened to a podcast where Suzanne was talking about her book and she said

this line, she probably forgets it, but it stuck stuck with me.

She said, no one's going to come to your door to give you a medal for all the

good things that you have been doing.

And I thought to myself, when you said that, I thought, have I sort of been

waiting for someone to come to my door and give me a medal for all the good

things that I've been doing?

Why do we do that? Why do we expect that at some point everyone's going to turn?

Yes, here is your due for all the good things that you've been doing.

And of course, God sees what we do and nothing that we do for him is in vain.

But we need to see that when it comes to working in God's field,

it's not about the reward.

Any reward is a bonus. The best thing is being with God, getting to work in

the field with him. Your life is God saying, hey, come and work in my field with me.

Ephesians chapter 2 verse 10 reads, For we are God's handiwork created in Christ

Ephesians 2:10

Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

There are good works waiting out there that God has prepared in advance,

not for someone else, for you.

You, that is the portion that every single one of us can take delight in.

The daily process of living the day that God has set before you again.

In the story of the prodigal son, the older brother is so annoyed.

He's so annoyed because the younger brother comes back home after claiming half

of his inheritance portion, wasting it, finally realizing I've got to go back home.

Home, the younger brother wastes everything and he comes, he's not scolded. He's not punished.

He's celebrated with a party. He's loved, but not by the older brother.

At the end of that story, the older brother thinks it's unfair that he,

the older brother, he's, he stayed with the father the whole time.

He's done the right thing the whole time.

And he is not getting a party.

It's not fair.

And what does the father say in that story?

I'll tell you to teach his oldest son about what the best thing is. It's not the party.

And what he doesn't do, which is what we would often do, is,

yeah, you're right, and quickly organize a party for the older brother so it's all fair.

He doesn't do that. There's no party for you, older son.

There's no party for you, faithful son who's been with me the whole time. No way.

But the father says to his oldest boy these words, son, you are always with me.

You don't need a prize or a party. you don't need to fight for every millimeter.

You don't need to be envious of how easy and good other people have it.

You have your father in heaven and he loves you.

And he invites you to work with him and to do the good works that he has set for you.

He's invited you to be by his side.

And I wonder this morning, if we can maybe see what the worker in the field

did not see, what the older brother could not see, but what David does see here in Psalm 16.

And that is that prayer is not a duty.

Prayer is not something we tick off. Prayer is not something that we should do.

It's an open opportunity at all times to remember that we get to be with God.

Prayer is not something that we should do. It's something that is so deeply

good for us and we get to do it. you can say anything to God.

And so David declares what I think you might also choose to declare with him

as the band will come back up.

And as we prepare to sing to God again, maybe you would declare like David in

verse seven and eight and nine, where he says, I will praise the Lord who counsels me.

I will keep my eyes always on the Lord. With him at my right hand, I will not be shaken.

Therefore, my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices.

Let's pray. God, we are sorry for the times that we get distracted by cars and

houses and finances and jobs and heads of hair and all sorts of things, God.

We are genuinely sorry, Lord. Lord, help us this morning to be even just temporarily

re-corrected in what we should be focusing on, and that is that we get to be with you.

Thank you for the love that you have for us, and I pray, God,

for all of us in our prayer lives that we would take away this morning a real

feeling of get to rather than should.

We pray this in Jesus' name.