WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:07.000 Good evening. Please do keep your Bible open. That's Sam, Sam 16. 00:00:10.000 --> 00:00:16.000 If you are a Christian, if you're a churchgoer in Scotland today, 00:00:16.000 --> 00:00:24.000 from week to week, month by month, year by year, you probably sing out loud with other people 00:00:24.000 --> 00:00:30.000 and sing a variety of songs far more than most people do in Scotland today. 00:00:32.000 --> 00:00:39.000 Some people are in choirs and they might be quite serious about singing, but that's a niche hobby. 00:00:39.000 --> 00:00:45.000 Some people like karaoke. For a lot of people in Scotland, the only song that they'll sing 00:00:45.000 --> 00:00:53.000 with any regularity is O'Flyer of Scotland, if they happen to go to watch the Scotland football team play. 00:00:53.000 --> 00:00:57.000 In the Euros a couple of weeks ago, I was listening to the radio in the car 00:00:57.000 --> 00:01:04.000 and I heard a letter being read out loud that was written by the widow of a Scotland fan from the Tartan army. 00:01:04.000 --> 00:01:10.000 She'd written this letter to the team to be read to them before they went to play. 00:01:10.000 --> 00:01:17.000 He was buried in a Scotland strip and one of the things that she said about her late husband was 00:01:17.000 --> 00:01:23.000 that the only song she had ever heard him sing in all of the years that they'd been married, 00:01:23.000 --> 00:01:27.000 which was most of her life, was O'Flyer of Scotland. 00:01:29.000 --> 00:01:35.000 That's true for a lot of people in Scotland, that we don't sing many songs. 00:01:35.000 --> 00:01:38.000 We don't sing often out loud with other people. 00:01:38.000 --> 00:01:42.000 And of the songs that a lot of us do sing, we don't think that much about the lyrics. 00:01:42.000 --> 00:01:47.000 I'm not a betting man, but I think if I were, I'd be confident that at Hamden Stadium 00:01:47.000 --> 00:01:52.000 they were to ask how many people of you who sing this song know who was proud Edward and when did he live. 00:01:52.000 --> 00:01:55.000 Probably most people wouldn't know. 00:01:55.000 --> 00:02:04.000 Christianity gives you a very different life, a life full of songs, a life of singing out loud with other people. 00:02:04.000 --> 00:02:11.000 And hopefully if that's you, when we sing, we think more about the words that we sing together. 00:02:11.000 --> 00:02:17.000 Because the content of what we sing is something that builds us up in the faith. 00:02:17.000 --> 00:02:21.000 Biblically we sing to God, but also biblically we sing to one another. 00:02:21.000 --> 00:02:24.000 And in our songs we build one another up in our faith. 00:02:24.000 --> 00:02:30.000 And a lot of the songs that are there for us to sing, we've been singing tonight are the Psalms. 00:02:30.000 --> 00:02:36.000 And you're doing an evening series just now on Psalms over the summer, so tonight we're looking at Psalm 16. 00:02:36.000 --> 00:02:43.000 And what I want to address tonight is how when we pay attention to the words that we sing when we're singing Psalms, 00:02:43.000 --> 00:02:50.000 there are some Psalms that are really easy to imagine yourself into the lyrics in. 00:02:50.000 --> 00:02:55.000 But there are other Psalms for that seems not as easy to do immediately. 00:02:55.000 --> 00:03:02.000 If you're a despondent, you can sing, why are you downcast, oh my soul, why so disturbed in me? 00:03:02.000 --> 00:03:05.000 And you fit right into the Psalm. 00:03:05.000 --> 00:03:09.000 If you're in good times and you're singing Psalms of praise and rejoicing, 00:03:09.000 --> 00:03:11.000 you identify with the words, right? 00:03:11.000 --> 00:03:13.000 It could have been you who wrote them. 00:03:13.000 --> 00:03:20.000 If you're deeply burdened by guilt and by sin, you're singing Psalm 51 or Psalm 32, 00:03:20.000 --> 00:03:25.000 you identify really directly with the words of the Psalm. 00:03:25.000 --> 00:03:31.000 But there are some other Psalms that often Christians find hard to sing. 00:03:31.000 --> 00:03:38.000 Because some of the Psalms seem to be written from the perspective of a perfect person. 00:03:38.000 --> 00:03:42.000 Someone whose life is a picture of total flourishing. 00:03:42.000 --> 00:03:47.000 Someone who can say, I love God perfectly with everything that I have. 00:03:47.000 --> 00:03:51.000 And I obey God perfectly in everything that I do. 00:03:51.000 --> 00:03:56.000 Someone who can say, the Lord dealt with me according to my righteousness, 00:03:56.000 --> 00:04:00.000 according to the cleanness of my hands, He rewarded me. 00:04:00.000 --> 00:04:05.000 And some Christians read that and think, how am I meant to sing that? 00:04:05.000 --> 00:04:11.000 And the Bible also tells me that I'm a sinner and I'm not perfect. 00:04:11.000 --> 00:04:14.000 How am I meant to say I agree with Romans 7? 00:04:14.000 --> 00:04:17.000 All of the good things that I want to do, I somehow seem not to do. 00:04:17.000 --> 00:04:19.000 And all of the bad things that I don't want to do, I end up doing. 00:04:19.000 --> 00:04:22.000 Who will deliver me from this body of death? 00:04:22.000 --> 00:04:29.000 I'm meant to say, I believe that and sing these songs about being a perfect person. 00:04:29.000 --> 00:04:32.000 So tonight we're looking at one of those Psalms. 00:04:32.000 --> 00:04:35.000 We could call them perfection Psalms in Psalm 16. 00:04:35.000 --> 00:04:38.000 And the Psalm before it is one of those as well. 00:04:38.000 --> 00:04:41.000 Psalm 15 goes like this. 00:04:41.000 --> 00:04:44.000 What kind of a person can be near to God? 00:04:44.000 --> 00:04:46.000 Who may ascend God's holy hill? 00:04:46.000 --> 00:04:49.000 And the description is an absolutely perfect person. 00:04:49.000 --> 00:04:55.000 And everything that person does and says even thinks in their heart. 00:04:55.000 --> 00:05:01.000 And the end of the Psalm says that the kind of person who can be near to God is utterly unshakable. 00:05:01.000 --> 00:05:09.000 So perfect as to be unshakable by whatever circumstances this world can throw at you. 00:05:09.000 --> 00:05:16.000 And so Psalm 15 is like that and Psalm 16 carries on, but it takes it up another level. 00:05:16.000 --> 00:05:21.000 What kind of person does Psalm 16 have in view? 00:05:21.000 --> 00:05:25.000 Someone whose entire life is perfect. 00:05:25.000 --> 00:05:30.000 Someone who is unshakable by circumstances. 00:05:30.000 --> 00:05:32.000 Someone who loves God perfectly. 00:05:32.000 --> 00:05:35.000 So that's the first half of the Psalm versus one to eight. 00:05:35.000 --> 00:05:43.000 And then the second half is that this person's life is so perfect, so pleasing to God. 00:05:43.000 --> 00:05:53.000 That person's sense of being loved by God is so intense that even in a world of death, death could never catch that person. 00:05:53.000 --> 00:06:05.000 Instead, this person so perfectly loved by God expects to transition into glory and to see God directly. 00:06:05.000 --> 00:06:12.000 It's, so if you're thinking of characters in the Bible, maybe if you're wondering what does this even look like in a narrative? 00:06:12.000 --> 00:06:17.000 The Old Testament example of someone like this is Enoch in the book of Genesis. 00:06:17.000 --> 00:06:22.000 We have minimal details about him, but they're quite remarkable. 00:06:22.000 --> 00:06:27.000 You could sum up his whole life in the phrase from Genesis that Enoch walked with God. 00:06:27.000 --> 00:06:38.000 And then it says in Genesis that the way it describes how his life didn't end, but it transitioned, that Enoch was not found. 00:06:38.000 --> 00:06:42.000 In other words, when he left this world, there was nobody. 00:06:42.000 --> 00:06:44.000 Instead, God took him. 00:06:44.000 --> 00:06:56.000 And Hebrews 11 in the New Testament explains what that means, that Enoch was so, he pleased God so much and God was so pleased with him that God did not want him to experience death. 00:06:56.000 --> 00:06:57.000 So God took him. 00:06:57.000 --> 00:06:59.000 So he just bypassed it. 00:06:59.000 --> 00:07:00.000 Okay. 00:07:00.000 --> 00:07:03.000 A remarkable person in the Old Testament like that. 00:07:03.000 --> 00:07:10.000 And Sam 16, as we've been singing these words together, is written from that kind of person's perspective. 00:07:10.000 --> 00:07:21.000 That perspective of being so pleased with God, so pleased by God and God being so pleased with you, that God will spare you from death and decay. 00:07:21.000 --> 00:07:22.000 That that's your expectation. 00:07:22.000 --> 00:07:30.000 That in a world where, in the words of Romans, the wages of sin is death, the wages that your life has earned would be life. 00:07:30.000 --> 00:07:34.000 Everlasting life, unbroken life. 00:07:34.000 --> 00:07:50.000 Now, if you don't know how to read this kind of a Sam, or also if you're even remotely honest about yourself, you know, you might read Sam 16 and think, how am I meant to sing that? 00:07:50.000 --> 00:07:53.000 How do I identify with that? 00:07:53.000 --> 00:08:02.000 Or if you know anything about the life of King David, and it begins with a Sam of David, you might think, how on earth could David sing that? 00:08:02.000 --> 00:08:03.000 Was he just deluded? 00:08:03.000 --> 00:08:05.000 Is it just narcissism? 00:08:05.000 --> 00:08:06.000 Is he living in denial? 00:08:06.000 --> 00:08:11.000 How could someone who'd done all the things that he did produce these words? 00:08:11.000 --> 00:08:21.000 So what I want to do tonight is to help you think specifically about Sam 16 as a kind of perfection Sam about a perfect person. 00:08:21.000 --> 00:08:25.000 And our prompt to do that is actually just from the Bible itself. 00:08:25.000 --> 00:08:29.000 So after Simon read Sam 16, he also read Acts 2. 00:08:29.000 --> 00:08:35.000 Now, Acts 2 is the sermon that Peter preaches on the day of Pentecost. 00:08:35.000 --> 00:08:39.000 Okay, it's from the Holy Spirit has poured out on people from all over the world. 00:08:39.000 --> 00:08:46.000 And Peter preaches the sermon on Jesus having suffered and died and being resurrected. 00:08:46.000 --> 00:08:53.000 Did you ever notice what text he preaches from, from the Bible to preach this sermon? 00:08:53.000 --> 00:08:55.000 It's Sam 16. 00:08:55.000 --> 00:09:02.000 If you go further on through the book of Acts into Acts 13, there's a sermon by Saul and Barnabas and Antioch. 00:09:02.000 --> 00:09:09.000 And it's a long detailed sermon all about why Jesus had to suffer and die and be resurrected. 00:09:09.000 --> 00:09:13.000 And their text as well is Sam 16. 00:09:13.000 --> 00:09:22.000 And what you see in both of those sermons in the book of Acts is an insight that Sam 16 could not possibly be primarily about the person who wrote it. 00:09:22.000 --> 00:09:29.000 Couldn't possibly be primarily about David, a man whose life was a million miles away from perfect. 00:09:29.000 --> 00:09:32.000 A man who died. 00:09:32.000 --> 00:09:35.000 It has to be about someone else primarily. 00:09:35.000 --> 00:09:40.000 And here's the big thing that someone else is also not you primarily. 00:09:40.000 --> 00:09:43.000 It's also not me primarily. 00:09:43.000 --> 00:09:51.000 So just like David wasn't ultimately singing about himself when he sang these words, neither are you and neither am I. 00:09:51.000 --> 00:09:59.000 Peter's words, brothers, I may say to you with confidence about David that he both died and was buried and his tomb is with us to this day. 00:09:59.000 --> 00:10:03.000 He foresaw that he spoke about the resurrection of the Christ. 00:10:03.000 --> 00:10:05.000 Paul's words on Sam 16. 00:10:05.000 --> 00:10:14.000 David fell asleep and was laid with his father's and saw corruption, but he whom God raised up did not see corruption. 00:10:14.000 --> 00:10:19.000 So this is a Sam that is primarily about Jesus. 00:10:19.000 --> 00:10:26.000 Because he was the embodiment of everything this song tells us about what it is like to be a perfect person. 00:10:26.000 --> 00:10:28.000 A perfect life. 00:10:28.000 --> 00:10:33.000 This Sam 16 is like a window into the soul of Jesus, a window into his inner life. 00:10:33.000 --> 00:10:38.000 His experience of being everything that he is. 00:10:38.000 --> 00:10:44.000 Which of you are a Christian gives you powerful reasons to want to sing it. 00:10:44.000 --> 00:10:48.000 But if you're listening to this and maybe you're not a Christian, 00:10:48.000 --> 00:10:52.000 maybe you're thinking, well, that's nice for them, but this doesn't really matter for me. 00:10:52.000 --> 00:10:54.000 Because I don't believe in Jesus. 00:10:54.000 --> 00:10:58.000 If that's you, here's the thing. 00:10:58.000 --> 00:11:05.000 That this song is also a direct challenge into your life for this reason. 00:11:05.000 --> 00:11:15.000 Christians sing Sam 16 because we believe that our lives are anchored in a perfect unshakable person. 00:11:15.000 --> 00:11:18.000 Jesus himself is our constant. 00:11:18.000 --> 00:11:21.000 And whatever our circumstances may be, he doesn't change. 00:11:21.000 --> 00:11:24.000 He's the same yesterday, today and forever. 00:11:24.000 --> 00:11:26.000 He is eternally pre-existent. 00:11:26.000 --> 00:11:28.000 The fullness of all things. 00:11:28.000 --> 00:11:32.000 I mean, we can't find words that are high enough to sum up how great we think he is. 00:11:32.000 --> 00:11:35.000 And he is the rock in our lives. 00:11:35.000 --> 00:11:38.000 We couldn't imagine anything greater than him. 00:11:38.000 --> 00:11:44.000 And in Sam 16, we have lyrics that put all of that into a song. 00:11:44.000 --> 00:11:46.000 And it's an anthem. 00:11:46.000 --> 00:11:47.000 It's thousands of years old. 00:11:47.000 --> 00:11:54.000 And it has been sung by people in different languages and different cultures and different nations and different times in history. 00:11:54.000 --> 00:12:01.000 And we have all sung Sam 16 because we believe in Jesus as the unshakable one, 00:12:01.000 --> 00:12:08.000 whose unshakableness bleeds into our lives and makes him a rock and our anchor wherever we come from. 00:12:08.000 --> 00:12:14.000 And you can reject that anthem, of course, and reject everything it means. 00:12:14.000 --> 00:12:18.000 But the question that the song itself puts to you is, 00:12:18.000 --> 00:12:23.000 what kind of anthem can your life muster in its place? 00:12:23.000 --> 00:12:28.000 It throws then the gauntlet to the songs at the center of your life. 00:12:28.000 --> 00:12:38.000 If someone spent a lifetime with you and only heard you sing one song ever, what would it be? 00:12:38.000 --> 00:12:45.000 There's a thing that philosophers throughout the ages, if you go really far back in history, 00:12:45.000 --> 00:12:49.000 have called the summum bonum, the highest good. 00:12:49.000 --> 00:12:54.000 And it's the thing that everybody has, it's the thing that you say, well, this is the ultimate ideal for me. 00:12:54.000 --> 00:12:58.000 This is what I live for, the thing that I value most above everything. 00:12:58.000 --> 00:13:03.000 That's my summum bonum and everybody has one, a thing that we value more than anything else. 00:13:03.000 --> 00:13:11.000 If you had to set your summum bonum, your highest goods, to words and music, what would it be? 00:13:11.000 --> 00:13:14.000 That's the kind of question that Sam 16 asks you. 00:13:14.000 --> 00:13:19.000 Would it be? Oh, Flower of Scotland? 00:13:19.000 --> 00:13:28.000 So your summum bonum, your highest good, is something that you can't share with people who weren't born here? 00:13:28.000 --> 00:13:33.000 Would it be, for a lot of people in Edinburgh, Taylor Swift's back catalogue? 00:13:33.000 --> 00:13:35.000 Shake it off. 00:13:35.000 --> 00:13:40.000 So your summum bonum is just your individual freedom from other people. 00:13:40.000 --> 00:13:44.000 Would it be John Lennon's imagine? 00:13:44.000 --> 00:13:50.000 So your highest good admits that it is an absurd, impossible dream. 00:13:50.000 --> 00:13:59.000 But once you've chosen your life anthem, the kind of question that Sam 16 puts to you is, can that anthem make you unshakable? 00:13:59.000 --> 00:14:02.000 However your circumstances might change. 00:14:02.000 --> 00:14:08.000 And what I mean by that is, what the Sam means is, if your circumstances change, will your highest good remain the same? 00:14:08.000 --> 00:14:10.000 Is it unshakable? 00:14:10.000 --> 00:14:17.000 Will it continue to give your life meaning and dignity and joy and purpose? 00:14:17.000 --> 00:14:28.000 Will it mean that you can live and die happily because of it, regardless of everything else in the world and in your life? 00:14:28.000 --> 00:14:35.000 If Scotland never qualified for another tournament, which may happen, if the country goes to the doldrums, 00:14:35.000 --> 00:14:41.000 if Scotland one day no longer exists, which will definitely happen at some point, 00:14:41.000 --> 00:14:44.000 can a flower of Scotland make you unshakable? 00:14:44.000 --> 00:14:50.000 Can it make your life now abundantly worth living, whatever the circumstances? 00:14:50.000 --> 00:14:54.000 If your highest good is your individual freedom from other people, 00:14:54.000 --> 00:15:02.000 and you can shake it off, and you suddenly lose your freedom through circumstances that you didn't choose, 00:15:02.000 --> 00:15:07.000 through illness or accidents or economic devastation or something like that, 00:15:07.000 --> 00:15:11.000 and all of a sudden you become radically dependent on other people, 00:15:11.000 --> 00:15:15.000 won't your song change too? Please don't shake me off. 00:15:15.000 --> 00:15:19.000 If you're doing the five-year-olds version of that, please don't let me go. 00:15:19.000 --> 00:15:22.000 But before I've been singing, let it go. 00:15:22.000 --> 00:15:27.000 We could go on and on like this, with all these possible anthems. 00:15:27.000 --> 00:15:32.000 But what I want to do is take this directly into the Psalm and help you think about it in two parts, 00:15:32.000 --> 00:15:34.000 because the Psalm is in two sections. 00:15:34.000 --> 00:15:39.000 The first part is verses 1 to 8, and the second part is verses 9 to 11. 00:15:39.000 --> 00:15:46.000 The first part is the picture of someone who loves God perfectly in life. 00:15:46.000 --> 00:15:51.000 And then the second part of the Psalm is God loving this person so perfectly 00:15:51.000 --> 00:15:56.000 that God wants to spare that person from death and decay. 00:15:56.000 --> 00:16:05.000 So this is the portrait of the perfect life that Christianity offers you as an anchor for your own. 00:16:05.000 --> 00:16:09.000 This is Jesus being offered to you in song. 00:16:09.000 --> 00:16:12.000 So the first part, verses 1 to 8. 00:16:12.000 --> 00:16:16.000 Now one thing to notice, and I'm glad that Simon read this because it wasn't on the screen, 00:16:16.000 --> 00:16:19.000 but the Psalm begins with a mixtam of David. 00:16:19.000 --> 00:16:22.000 That's not just something that the Bible translators added. 00:16:22.000 --> 00:16:27.000 That's there in the Psalm, and you might be wondering what a mixtam is, this Hebrew word. 00:16:27.000 --> 00:16:32.000 And so am I, and so are we all actually, because it's a word that we just don't know how to translate. 00:16:32.000 --> 00:16:35.000 What was a mixtam? Nobody's sure, and that's why. 00:16:35.000 --> 00:16:38.000 In the Bible translations, we just don't translate that word. 00:16:38.000 --> 00:16:41.000 Whatever the song is, it's a mixtam by David. 00:16:41.000 --> 00:16:47.000 And there are other psalms that are also called mixtams, or mixtamim, if you're a Hebrew purist. 00:16:47.000 --> 00:16:51.000 Mixtams of David, there's a series of them in the 50s of the Psalms. 00:16:51.000 --> 00:16:57.000 And with all of these other mixtam songs, it's like an SOS to God. 00:16:57.000 --> 00:16:59.000 It's a distress call. 00:16:59.000 --> 00:17:04.000 And then these other Psalms, when it's a mixtam, David is being chased by his enemies, his life is in danger. 00:17:04.000 --> 00:17:12.000 And the lyrics in those other mixtam songs are a window into what he can see around him, 00:17:12.000 --> 00:17:17.000 into the near and present danger. 00:17:17.000 --> 00:17:22.000 Psalm 16 is really interesting because it starts off by saying, this is a mixtam. 00:17:22.000 --> 00:17:28.000 But you would never know by reading the Psalm what exactly was going on in his circumstances. 00:17:28.000 --> 00:17:32.000 That's just not part of the picture. You're only told that it's a mixtam. 00:17:32.000 --> 00:17:38.000 But we're not giving all the details of what is going on. 00:17:38.000 --> 00:17:44.000 What we do know is that the author is serene. 00:17:44.000 --> 00:17:49.000 In circumstances that have made him send out this distress call. 00:17:49.000 --> 00:17:53.000 And what we do know is that whatever... 00:17:53.000 --> 00:17:57.000 So we don't know what was going on in his life, but in a way that's the point. 00:17:57.000 --> 00:18:02.000 Whatever the circumstances were that prompt him to say, I need a mixtam and I need one now. 00:18:02.000 --> 00:18:10.000 Those circumstances cannot match the highest goods that David has anchored his life in. 00:18:10.000 --> 00:18:17.000 It's a bit like Paul writes in 2 Corinthians that our light and momentary troubles 00:18:17.000 --> 00:18:21.000 are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. 00:18:21.000 --> 00:18:25.000 So David has the highest good in his life, a summum bonum, 00:18:25.000 --> 00:18:29.000 that so far outweighs whatever the distressing circumstances are in the background 00:18:29.000 --> 00:18:32.000 that he just doesn't tell us what they were. 00:18:32.000 --> 00:18:39.000 And the way that he finds serenity there is by focusing on God as his highest good. 00:18:39.000 --> 00:18:41.000 Look at it in verse 2. 00:18:41.000 --> 00:18:43.000 I have no good apart from you. 00:18:43.000 --> 00:18:49.000 Literally in Hebrew what he writes is, apart from you, nothing I have would be good. 00:18:49.000 --> 00:18:55.000 It's like a much better version of some of your old enough to remember Alicia Keys. 00:18:55.000 --> 00:18:57.000 Some of you are... 00:18:57.000 --> 00:19:00.000 That won't mean anything to some of you, but she's a singer. 00:19:00.000 --> 00:19:03.000 She has a song called, If I Ain't Got You. 00:19:03.000 --> 00:19:06.000 And it's about someone who makes another human being their highest goods. 00:19:06.000 --> 00:19:09.000 If people want it all, I just want nothing at all, 00:19:09.000 --> 00:19:13.000 because everything means nothing if I ain't got you. 00:19:13.000 --> 00:19:15.000 Okay? 00:19:15.000 --> 00:19:19.000 That's almost a paraphrase, but not about another human being about God. 00:19:19.000 --> 00:19:21.000 Everything means nothing. 00:19:21.000 --> 00:19:24.000 Nothing is good if I haven't got you. 00:19:24.000 --> 00:19:29.000 So he starts off by focusing his own life on God as his highest goods. 00:19:29.000 --> 00:19:34.000 But then after that, what you see is instead of thinking about whoever is on his tail at the moment, 00:19:34.000 --> 00:19:38.000 putting his life in danger, he looks at it and he sees the human race. 00:19:38.000 --> 00:19:41.000 And he sees that there are only two ways for humans to live. 00:19:41.000 --> 00:19:44.000 And this is the contrast in verses 3 and 4. 00:19:44.000 --> 00:19:46.000 There are two groups of people. 00:19:46.000 --> 00:19:49.000 There are what he calls the saints in the land. 00:19:49.000 --> 00:19:52.000 And he doesn't say much about what they're like directly. 00:19:52.000 --> 00:19:54.000 And instead we find out what they're not like, 00:19:54.000 --> 00:19:58.000 because he says more about the other way to live, 00:19:58.000 --> 00:20:01.000 which is those who run after another God. 00:20:01.000 --> 00:20:07.000 And he writes that the sorrows of those who run after another God shall multiply. 00:20:07.000 --> 00:20:15.000 Now what makes that line an exceptional lyric in a song is just how much detail, 00:20:15.000 --> 00:20:20.000 how much meaning he folds into a few verses, a few lines. 00:20:20.000 --> 00:20:23.000 So we have this in English, who run after. 00:20:23.000 --> 00:20:24.000 Okay? 00:20:24.000 --> 00:20:30.000 And the kind of picture that David wants you to see is not Usain Bolt 00:20:30.000 --> 00:20:35.000 running skillfully, with pleasure coursing through his every sinew, 00:20:35.000 --> 00:20:38.000 as he runs excellently. 00:20:38.000 --> 00:20:44.000 It's more like running after in the sense of being harried. 00:20:44.000 --> 00:20:47.000 And not just hurried, but harried with an A. 00:20:47.000 --> 00:20:49.000 That something is kind of whipping you, 00:20:49.000 --> 00:20:53.000 that it's short term, that you don't have time to catch your breath, 00:20:53.000 --> 00:20:54.000 you're harassed. 00:20:54.000 --> 00:20:57.000 This is not a park run. 00:20:57.000 --> 00:21:00.000 To be harried by something is when you're put under strain, 00:21:00.000 --> 00:21:04.000 by that thing, because of the demands that it puts on you, 00:21:04.000 --> 00:21:05.000 and you have to react right now, 00:21:05.000 --> 00:21:08.000 drop what you're doing and run. 00:21:08.000 --> 00:21:12.000 So it's a word that actually gets used quite a lot in narratives in the Old Testament. 00:21:12.000 --> 00:21:16.000 And it's always when circumstances have changed right here, right now, 00:21:16.000 --> 00:21:18.000 and I have to react, and I've got to run, 00:21:18.000 --> 00:21:21.000 and I don't have time to think. 00:21:21.000 --> 00:21:28.000 So it's used, you always see it used in narratives to describe people who are pushed along anxiously 00:21:28.000 --> 00:21:31.000 in short term ways. 00:21:31.000 --> 00:21:32.000 And it's a word choice. 00:21:32.000 --> 00:21:35.000 It's actually the opposite of someone like Enoch. 00:21:35.000 --> 00:21:38.000 He wasn't harried, he walked with God. 00:21:38.000 --> 00:21:43.000 They're very different ways to move through life. 00:21:43.000 --> 00:21:45.000 But in lots of Old Testament stories, 00:21:45.000 --> 00:21:48.000 people are hurriedly running after things, 00:21:48.000 --> 00:21:50.000 because circumstances are changing around them. 00:21:50.000 --> 00:21:53.000 And even it gets used in 1 Samuel, 00:21:53.000 --> 00:21:58.000 but David himself, when the Philistines are chasing after him, he's harried by them. 00:21:58.000 --> 00:22:04.000 But here in Psalm 16, whatever was happening in the background, 00:22:04.000 --> 00:22:09.000 David wasn't the one here who felt harried. 00:22:09.000 --> 00:22:13.000 He feels more like Enoch walking with God. 00:22:13.000 --> 00:22:16.000 In fact, the people who are harried are the ones who are running after him. 00:22:16.000 --> 00:22:18.000 And in that way, it kind of doesn't make sense. 00:22:18.000 --> 00:22:22.000 It's like a weird inversion of the normal narratives you read about David, 00:22:22.000 --> 00:22:24.000 who's being chased and he's harried and so on. 00:22:24.000 --> 00:22:27.000 But actually, when it looks externally like they're not harried, 00:22:27.000 --> 00:22:30.000 the ones who are chasing him, actually they are. 00:22:30.000 --> 00:22:35.000 And he's walking with God. 00:22:35.000 --> 00:22:39.000 So the people who are harried are those who run after the demands of another God. 00:22:39.000 --> 00:22:43.000 And the picture of the life that David gives us that comes from this, 00:22:43.000 --> 00:22:48.000 is that if you live by that, harried by circumstances, 00:22:48.000 --> 00:22:56.000 where the highest good that you live for is not the actual ultimate good, which is God, 00:22:56.000 --> 00:22:59.000 your sorrows will increase. 00:22:59.000 --> 00:23:02.000 They won't reduce, they will multiply. 00:23:02.000 --> 00:23:06.000 And so the picture that David gives us of what a life like that looks like, 00:23:06.000 --> 00:23:08.000 there are two details here, 00:23:08.000 --> 00:23:11.000 and they're probably things that culturally will seem very foreign to you, 00:23:11.000 --> 00:23:15.000 that those gods demand blood sacrifices and they demand your loyalty 00:23:15.000 --> 00:23:19.000 in the way that a crime boss will tell you, say my name. 00:23:19.000 --> 00:23:21.000 Once you've said the name, then that's it. 00:23:21.000 --> 00:23:24.000 You're bowed into submission and they own you. 00:23:24.000 --> 00:23:28.000 So they demand blood sacrifices and they demand your loyalty, these other gods. 00:23:28.000 --> 00:23:31.000 Now those might sound like very strange foreign things to you, 00:23:31.000 --> 00:23:33.000 especially if you're not familiar with the Bible. 00:23:33.000 --> 00:23:39.000 Let me show you how this is really not that different to life in Edinburgh in 2024. 00:23:39.000 --> 00:23:43.000 Now, some of you will be young enough, 00:23:43.000 --> 00:23:47.000 not young enough to know Alicia Keys, but young enough to have seen Inside Out 2. 00:23:47.000 --> 00:23:50.000 It's the big blockbuster globally, the cinema at the moment. 00:23:50.000 --> 00:23:53.000 And I'll try to draw an illustration without giving away any spoilers 00:23:53.000 --> 00:23:55.000 for those of you who haven't seen it yet. 00:23:55.000 --> 00:23:57.000 But it's about a girl who's just become a teenager 00:23:57.000 --> 00:23:59.000 and she goes off for the summer to a hockey camp, 00:23:59.000 --> 00:24:01.000 and it's about her inner life and her emotions 00:24:01.000 --> 00:24:05.000 and all the kind of challenges of working out who you are as a teen. 00:24:05.000 --> 00:24:09.000 And in Inside Out 2, because it's looking at her inner life, 00:24:09.000 --> 00:24:12.000 I can say this without giving away any spoilers, 00:24:12.000 --> 00:24:14.000 she is an idolater. 00:24:14.000 --> 00:24:16.000 She sets up idols in her own heart. 00:24:16.000 --> 00:24:21.000 Things where she thinks, if I don't have that, I am nothing. 00:24:21.000 --> 00:24:25.000 So she sets up these things that she thinks she needs to have as a new teenager. 00:24:25.000 --> 00:24:29.000 And the film is about the ways that the idols that she sets up, 00:24:29.000 --> 00:24:31.000 set demands on her. 00:24:31.000 --> 00:24:34.000 Tell her, if you want me, and by the way, you need me, 00:24:34.000 --> 00:24:36.000 and without me you're nothing, 00:24:36.000 --> 00:24:38.000 these are the things you're going to have to do. 00:24:38.000 --> 00:24:41.000 This is the kind of person you'll have to become. 00:24:41.000 --> 00:24:43.000 Say my name. 00:24:43.000 --> 00:24:49.000 And the film is about this girl and the way that idols grow in her heart. 00:24:49.000 --> 00:24:54.000 And what those demands will cost her if she's going to meet them. 00:24:54.000 --> 00:24:57.000 If they had a tagline in the poster for the film, 00:24:57.000 --> 00:25:03.000 it could have been the sorrows of those who run after another God will multiply. 00:25:03.000 --> 00:25:10.000 And why that film is so powerful is that it's really telling us a true story about idolatry, 00:25:10.000 --> 00:25:16.000 that serving idols is exhausting, trying to take ordinary things, good things, 00:25:16.000 --> 00:25:19.000 but burden them with being the ultimate thing, 00:25:19.000 --> 00:25:22.000 is absolutely exhausting. 00:25:22.000 --> 00:25:25.000 And it can't give you lasting joy and peace. 00:25:25.000 --> 00:25:29.000 In fact, David's insight is that your sorrows will only multiply. 00:25:29.000 --> 00:25:32.000 That's the kind of life you'll have. 00:25:32.000 --> 00:25:38.000 If you were in David's world, thousands of years ago in the ancient Near East, 00:25:38.000 --> 00:25:41.000 you would call those things God's divine beings, 00:25:41.000 --> 00:25:45.000 the God of fertility or crops or of war or whatever, 00:25:45.000 --> 00:25:48.000 and that God gives you demands, 00:25:48.000 --> 00:25:54.000 conduct these sacrifices to me, bow down before me, say my name. 00:25:54.000 --> 00:26:00.000 In Edinburgh, we don't call our idols gods, most of us, 00:26:00.000 --> 00:26:02.000 but it doesn't really make any difference. 00:26:02.000 --> 00:26:06.000 It's the same thing that's going on inside of us. 00:26:06.000 --> 00:26:12.000 Your chosen identity, your career, your achievements, your image, 00:26:12.000 --> 00:26:20.000 your political ideals, sports, pleasure, culture, 00:26:20.000 --> 00:26:25.000 how successful your children are, what postcode you have. 00:26:25.000 --> 00:26:30.000 And all of these idols are exhausting and demanding. 00:26:30.000 --> 00:26:36.000 And if you try to make any one of those finite things, 00:26:36.000 --> 00:26:39.000 take the place of what only the infinite, 00:26:39.000 --> 00:26:42.000 where only God himself can fulfill, 00:26:42.000 --> 00:26:45.000 you actually, you can't take one finite thing, 00:26:45.000 --> 00:26:47.000 substitute it for an infinite God, 00:26:47.000 --> 00:26:51.000 and not mess up all of the other finite things in your life. 00:26:51.000 --> 00:26:54.000 If you take any one of those details and try to make it the ultimate thing, 00:26:54.000 --> 00:26:58.000 everything, your sorrows and all of those things will only multiply. 00:26:58.000 --> 00:27:02.000 Let me give you a real example of this. 00:27:02.000 --> 00:27:06.000 So, I'm sure probably a lot of you will have noticed that Taylor Swift 00:27:06.000 --> 00:27:09.000 did some concerts in Edinburgh recently, 00:27:09.000 --> 00:27:14.000 and after her concert here, I read an article in The Guardian 00:27:14.000 --> 00:27:19.000 by a mother who had flown from America with her quite young daughter 00:27:19.000 --> 00:27:21.000 to see the concert. 00:27:21.000 --> 00:27:24.000 She said that doing this made her feel at the same time 00:27:24.000 --> 00:27:28.000 like the best and the worst mother in the world. 00:27:28.000 --> 00:27:30.000 And her reasoning for this was, 00:27:30.000 --> 00:27:33.000 my child has to be happy. 00:27:33.000 --> 00:27:35.000 And from my daughter's perspective, 00:27:35.000 --> 00:27:38.000 if there was a chance to see Taylor Swift, 00:27:38.000 --> 00:27:40.000 and I didn't buy that ticket, 00:27:40.000 --> 00:27:44.000 what kind of mother would I be, the letdown for my child? 00:27:44.000 --> 00:27:47.000 How could she be happy if I didn't do this? 00:27:47.000 --> 00:27:49.000 And I got her the ticket at all costs, 00:27:49.000 --> 00:27:52.000 and I flew to Scotland, and seeing the joy in her face, 00:27:52.000 --> 00:27:55.000 I felt like the best mother in the world, 00:27:55.000 --> 00:27:58.000 but at exactly the same time, 00:27:58.000 --> 00:28:01.000 I felt like the very worst mother in the world. 00:28:01.000 --> 00:28:03.000 Because do you know how much this all cost, 00:28:03.000 --> 00:28:07.000 and how many needy causes there are in the world that I believe in, 00:28:07.000 --> 00:28:09.000 how many mouths that could have been fed, 00:28:09.000 --> 00:28:12.000 how many people that could have been brought out of misery in real terms, 00:28:12.000 --> 00:28:17.000 and I spent all of this money taking my eight-year-old to a concert in Scotland, 00:28:17.000 --> 00:28:22.000 and think about the carbon footprint of this journey, for what? 00:28:22.000 --> 00:28:25.000 And I felt like the worst mother in the world, 00:28:25.000 --> 00:28:28.000 and the article was all about how I can't resolve this. 00:28:28.000 --> 00:28:32.000 The sorrows of those who run after another God, 00:28:32.000 --> 00:28:35.000 not the true God with a capital G, will multiply. 00:28:35.000 --> 00:28:38.000 You take finite things and elevate them to the infinite, 00:28:38.000 --> 00:28:40.000 and you collapse the whole thing. 00:28:40.000 --> 00:28:44.000 And you'll only ever end up feeling like the best and the worst worshiper 00:28:44.000 --> 00:28:48.000 of your God with a lowercase g that you could possibly be. 00:28:53.000 --> 00:28:56.000 So that's one level. That's a very trivial example. 00:28:56.000 --> 00:29:01.000 But think about all the other gods with a small g 00:29:01.000 --> 00:29:04.000 that you have tried to run after in your life. 00:29:04.000 --> 00:29:10.000 And ask yourself, has all of that running after them ever made you less anxious? 00:29:10.000 --> 00:29:14.000 Has it ever helped you to become unshakable? 00:29:14.000 --> 00:29:19.000 Has it ever given you that lasting joy and meaning and pleasure? 00:29:22.000 --> 00:29:28.000 In Psalm 16, actually, Jesus is the only person 00:29:28.000 --> 00:29:35.000 who knew what it was like to say everything that you read in verses 5 to 8, 00:29:35.000 --> 00:29:38.000 and say it and feel it all truthfully. 00:29:38.000 --> 00:29:43.000 And Jesus was the only person in history who had every right to feel like this, 00:29:43.000 --> 00:29:50.000 to say, because my Father is at my right hand, I shall not be shaken. 00:29:50.000 --> 00:29:56.000 Jesus himself, in this world of all of us who feel like the best and the worst worshippers of idols, 00:29:56.000 --> 00:30:01.000 Jesus is the only perfect worshiper of God, 00:30:01.000 --> 00:30:05.000 the only person who loved his Father perfectly, who loved his neighbor perfectly. 00:30:05.000 --> 00:30:15.000 And because of that, he is the ultimate non-anxious presence in the human race, 00:30:15.000 --> 00:30:17.000 in human history in our world. 00:30:17.000 --> 00:30:22.000 And if you know that about yourself, speaking of Jesus, 00:30:22.000 --> 00:30:29.000 if you're a perfect person like that, that feeling even extends into how you think about death. 00:30:29.000 --> 00:30:32.000 This is where we think about verses 9 to 11. 00:30:32.000 --> 00:30:38.000 So this is where the Psalm shifts from how much the perfect person loves God 00:30:38.000 --> 00:30:42.000 to how much God loves this perfect person. 00:30:42.000 --> 00:30:52.000 God loves this perfect person so much that God never wants the relationship to end. 00:30:52.000 --> 00:30:56.000 God does not want death to stop it. 00:30:56.000 --> 00:31:02.000 Imagine, if you can, even just begin to try to, 00:31:02.000 --> 00:31:11.000 imagine knowing that your entire relationship to God is so secure that you could say it and truly mean it, 00:31:11.000 --> 00:31:14.000 my whole being rejoices. 00:31:14.000 --> 00:31:17.000 And by that, you're talking about your body. 00:31:17.000 --> 00:31:22.000 This finite, breakable thing feels secure. 00:31:22.000 --> 00:31:30.000 And your inner life, my heart is glad because you believe and you know and you feel so much 00:31:30.000 --> 00:31:39.000 that God loves you to an unimaginable degree, so much so that he won't abandon your soul to the grave. 00:31:39.000 --> 00:31:47.000 Remember when, in the Bible, at the beginning, when Adam sinned and leaves Eden and leaves paradise, 00:31:47.000 --> 00:31:56.000 and he hears these words, you came from dust and to dust you shall return. 00:31:56.000 --> 00:32:03.000 Imagine feeling like the only human being for whom that rule does not apply. 00:32:03.000 --> 00:32:08.000 To glory, I shall go, I will see your face where there are pleasures forevermore. 00:32:08.000 --> 00:32:12.000 To feel like that is, to know that that is your destiny. 00:32:12.000 --> 00:32:23.000 What I'm asking you to imagine at this point is what Jesus knew, what Jesus felt in his own body and soul. 00:32:23.000 --> 00:32:34.000 I'm asking you to use Sam 16 to imagine why Jesus is able to say out loud that nobody can take my life from me. 00:32:34.000 --> 00:32:41.000 My life can only end if I lay it down because my Father loves me so much. 00:32:41.000 --> 00:32:50.000 I've spent a lot of this sermon saying that Sam 16 is not primarily about David's or about you or about me. 00:32:50.000 --> 00:32:58.000 It is primarily about Jesus, but that doesn't mean that it's not about us at all. 00:32:58.000 --> 00:33:08.000 It is secondarily about Jesus and it is secondarily about you and me if we are Christians. 00:33:08.000 --> 00:33:18.000 I want to close just by saying two things really briefly about this, about how the secondarily is a Sam for us and about us. 00:33:18.000 --> 00:33:24.000 There are two points about the gospel really, which are righteousness and resurrection. 00:33:24.000 --> 00:33:27.000 One, righteousness. 00:33:27.000 --> 00:33:40.000 The gospel is that in Jesus, God offers you perfect righteousness, that Jesus himself is the perfect person, that he is everything that we have failed to be. 00:33:40.000 --> 00:33:48.000 And he has the super abundance of righteousness and he is so generous with it and he offers it to you. 00:33:48.000 --> 00:33:55.000 And he will credit your account for you only had deficit before with all of the righteousness of his perfect obedience. 00:33:55.000 --> 00:34:05.000 Everything that he could say truly about himself in Sam 16, that can be transferred to you, that can become yours in the gospel. 00:34:05.000 --> 00:34:16.000 And what that means then is that if you are in Christ, when God looks at you, it's like he looks at you through a lens that is 100% made of Jesus. 00:34:16.000 --> 00:34:18.000 And he sees you through that lens. 00:34:18.000 --> 00:34:23.000 And what he sees in your life is everything that Jesus has earned. 00:34:23.000 --> 00:34:25.000 The Heidelberg Catechism has a way of putting this. 00:34:25.000 --> 00:34:33.000 I think it's really beautiful when it explains how we as descendants of Adam have inherited his fallen nature. 00:34:33.000 --> 00:34:41.000 We have sinful natures and because we have those natures, we then go on to live out those natures in our lives and we commit sins. 00:34:41.000 --> 00:34:49.000 But the Heidelberg Catechism says that because Jesus is our mediator with God, if you are in him, if you are in Christ, when God looks at you, 00:34:49.000 --> 00:34:54.000 it is as though you had never sinned or been a sinner. 00:34:54.000 --> 00:34:59.000 So everything about this perfect person in Sam 16 is transferable to you. 00:34:59.000 --> 00:35:04.000 And that is one of the mind-blowing things about the gospel. 00:35:04.000 --> 00:35:09.000 Sam 16 offers you a perfect person in your place. 00:35:09.000 --> 00:35:11.000 It offers you righteousness. 00:35:11.000 --> 00:35:15.000 And the second thing is resurrection. 00:35:15.000 --> 00:35:21.000 God the Father is perfectly pleased with God the Son. 00:35:21.000 --> 00:35:28.000 Because everything that you read about in Sam 16 is what it was really like for Jesus, that he loved God perfectly. 00:35:28.000 --> 00:35:35.000 And God the Father has been perfectly pleased with God the Son actually for all eternity before there was time and space. 00:35:35.000 --> 00:35:38.000 He was perfectly pleased with his Son. 00:35:38.000 --> 00:35:47.000 And that's no less true when the eternal Son enters time and space in the incarnation, when the word becomes flesh, 00:35:47.000 --> 00:35:50.000 and God then walks among us. 00:35:50.000 --> 00:35:55.000 And heaven opens and the voice from above says, this is my beloved Son. 00:35:55.000 --> 00:35:58.000 In him, I am well pleased. 00:35:58.000 --> 00:36:01.000 That wasn't something new from God the Father. 00:36:01.000 --> 00:36:09.000 He had been pleased with his Son forever before there was time and space. 00:36:09.000 --> 00:36:15.000 And that continues in time and space with the incarnate Son Jesus Christ. 00:36:15.000 --> 00:36:23.000 And the Father never wants that relationship with his Son to end. 00:36:23.000 --> 00:36:27.000 And here's something that's astonishing about the gospel. 00:36:27.000 --> 00:36:39.000 That it is just as true of you, that God loves you too much to want his relationship with you to come to an end. 00:36:39.000 --> 00:36:51.000 And that is why in the gospel, the resurrection of Jesus is the Bible calls it the first fruits of our resurrection. 00:36:51.000 --> 00:36:57.000 And it's why death is not the end. 00:36:57.000 --> 00:37:09.000 And that's why when we're singing this Psalm, this anthem, about how unshakable Jesus is in himself as this perfect person, 00:37:09.000 --> 00:37:12.000 that actually changes us. 00:37:12.000 --> 00:37:22.000 And it has the power to make us unshakable, to make us less anxious whatever our circumstances. 00:37:22.000 --> 00:37:32.000 And if you believe that, then what a resource you have in life and in death 00:37:32.000 --> 00:37:45.000 in becoming less shakable, more secure, more loved, more able to love, less fearful, less anxious 00:37:45.000 --> 00:37:52.000 to no longer be harried because you walk with God. 00:37:52.000 --> 00:38:01.000 But if you reject it, then the question, the Sam's own question for you is what other anthem? 00:38:01.000 --> 00:38:04.000 What song will you sing in its place? 00:38:04.000 --> 00:38:07.000 Let's pray. 00:38:07.000 --> 00:38:18.000 Our Lord, our God, we thank you for your Son Jesus Christ, the perfect person for the Son whom you've loved from all eternity 00:38:18.000 --> 00:38:21.000 and whom you have always been well pleased. 00:38:21.000 --> 00:38:27.000 And we thank you that He came into our world, that you were pleased with Him there. 00:38:27.000 --> 00:38:36.000 We thank you that He's the true and greater Enoch, that He, it's not simply that He was not found 00:38:36.000 --> 00:38:48.000 and was taken by you, but you were perfectly pleased with Him and He bore the punishment nonetheless that we deserved. 00:38:48.000 --> 00:38:51.000 We thank you that He entered death. 00:38:51.000 --> 00:38:58.000 We thank you because of His perfection, because of the unimaginable power of your love for Him, 00:38:58.000 --> 00:39:03.000 that it was not possible as we read in Acts 2, for death to hold Him. 00:39:03.000 --> 00:39:13.000 We thank you for His resurrection, for how that changes everything, for how it has the power to make us unshakable as well. 00:39:13.000 --> 00:39:15.000 So sanctify us through your words. 00:39:15.000 --> 00:39:18.000 We pray, make us more like Jesus. 00:39:18.000 --> 00:39:27.000 We pray for His unshakableness to change our lives, to help us to grow as people who walk with you, 00:39:27.000 --> 00:39:32.000 who are no longer harried by all of the circumstances of life. 00:39:32.000 --> 00:39:42.000 So help us to flourish, help us in our own small way to know what it is like when we sing words like these in Psalm 16. 00:39:42.000 --> 00:39:49.000 We pray this in Jesus' name, amen.