Psalm 16:10

0:00 Church. There's a subset of this church that knows at one point in time, I think it was about five years ago, when I was in the pastoral internship, I was preaching, and I may have drastically mispronounced a word, a very tricky word. Jokes were made, memes were made, Everyone had a good laugh. The word was Syntyche, and I thought it was Syntychich.

0:37 To be fair, I had asked YouTube how to pronounce the word, and Syntychich was what I got. But I don't know if you know this or not, but you can't trust everything you see on YouTube. And then when I saw the word Sheol in our text for tonight, I thought, I better double-check that one. Turns out, it was Sheol. That's what I thought it was, and I was right. Our passage tonight is Psalm 16, 10. We're going to read the whole chapter in part for context, but mainly it's just a wonderful psalm.

1:15 I mentioned to my wife in preparation for this. It would be great for her and I to memorize this psalm. I would encourage the same thing to you. As I read, remember, our verse is verse 10, but I'll be starting in verse 1. Psalm 16. Preserve me, O God, for in you I take refuge. I say to the Lord, you are my Lord. I have no good apart from you. As for the saints in the land, they are excellent ones in whom is all my delight. The sorrows of those who run after another God shall multiply.

1:49 Their drink offerings of blood I will not pour out or take their names on my lips. The Lord is my chosen portion in my cup. You hold my lot. The lines have fallen for me in pleasant places. Indeed, I have a beautiful inheritance. I bless the Lord who gives me counsel. In the night also my heart instructs me. I have set the Lord always before me. Because he is at my right hand, I shall not be shaken. Therefore, my heart is glad and my whole being rejoices.

2:23 My flesh also dwells secure, for you will not abandon my soul to Sheol or let your Holy One see corruption. You make known to me the path of life. In your presence there is fullness of joy, and at your right hand are pleasures forevermore. The main point for our text tonight is to rejoice at the mercy of God. Two points. Remember the great mercy of God and treasure the perseverance of the saints.

2:59 Remember the great mercy of God and treasure the perseverance of the saints. So the first point, remember the great mercy of God. David writes that God will not abandon his soul to Sheol. So let's start right there. What is Sheol? Sheol is a term in the Old Testament, in the Hebrew, that essentially means the opposite of the promised land. I always thought that it was a reference to hell, but it's not really.

3:29 It's more of a poetic term that was used to describe a hell-like place. I read a number of different commentaries that described it in a few different ways. It was referred to as the house of death, a place of nothing but darkness and dust, the enemy's bunker, a place with no escape, like the bottom of the sea. Job actually writes in Job 10, he's describing a place that they would have called Sheol.

4:03 In Job 10, you don't have to turn there, he's pleading with God for mercy, and it seems that he basically just expects God to not give him mercy and instead deliver him to Sheol. He describes it in Job 10, verse 18 through 22. He says to God, why did you bring me out from the womb? Would that I had died before an eye had seen me, and were as though I had not been carried from the womb to the grave. Are not my days few? Then cease and leave me alone that I may find a little cheer before I go, and I shall not return to the land of darkness and deep shadow, the land of gloom like thick darkness, like deep shadow without any order, where light is as thick as darkness. That's how Job describes Sheol. Do you ever feel like you're in a place

5:03 like that. Do you ever feel like where God maybe has you in life that it is the opposite of the promised land? My wife, Madison, and I had been married for four months. We were 24 years old, and I accepted a job as the director of music and small groups at a baby church plant in the heart of San Francisco. And we were super excited. New adventure as a married couple, moving to a cool city. I had big plans, was excited for my ministry in the church, for our church's music. We were so excited to take the city by storm, to join up with that church plant that was there, and just thrilled that God had kind of perfectly laid this opportunity at our feet. We'd been there for four months, and the executive pastor emailed the entire church and anyone who had ever visited

6:04 the church a blog post that he wrote entitled, When a Pastor Becomes a Bully. He was accusing our senior pastor of spiritual and relational abuse. Half the church left. The executive pastor was fired. The lead pastor was sent away for three months for a sabbatical and some counseling, and I found myself as the only full-time staff person at a church of around 80 people, no elders, no deacons, no membership. And we were in the middle of a building renovation, and I was now in charge of that, and the preaching calendar, and basically everything else.

6:44 Later, I think it was that same week, Maddie and I were surprised to learn that we were pregnant unexpectedly. And Maddie's morning sickness came on, but it wasn't just morning sickness, it was all-day sickness. I'm sure many women here can relate to that. She's too nauseous to leave the house, too nauseous to cook, too nauseous to go to our new church or home group or go out to visit with friends. We thought it would break at the 12-week mark. You hear that a lot, but it didn't.

7:16 And people told us that the 18-week market, the sickness will break. But no, weeks 20 came, 22, 24, the nausea from the pregnancy would not subside. And we were miserable. In a brand new city, a young married couple, we were supposed to be making friends, going to great restaurants, exploring this awesome city. We were supposed to be diving in deep to the ministry of our church and caring for others and seeing growth coming from our church plant.

7:55 Instead, half the church had left, and we were struggling. Most nights we'd sit alone in our tiny SF apartment, eating bland food, because that's all she could stomach, I mean, watching Netflix, and we were so depressed. Why would God move us from Kentucky to San Francisco for all that misery? We kind of poorly navigated all that for 34 weeks when her sickness finally broke.

8:30 It had been weeks since she'd been able to go to church. And at 36 weeks, kidney stones sent her body into preterm labor. And we spent a few nights in the hospital. And we did not think life could be so hard. I'll never forget one night, this was before the kidney stones, just one night where we were just particularly feeling the weight of all of this. And I literally grabbed my laptop and started looking for flights and start playing out a scenario to her.

9:08 Like, how can we get out of here? I don't even know how that would have worked out. I quit. We leave in a few weeks. I don't know. What I was trying to do, though, is I was trying to pull myself up out of Sheol. In this entire chapter of Psalm 16, David, its author, he is pointing out that God will persevere his people.

9:40 He says in verse 6, The lines have fallen for me in pleasant places. Indeed, I have a beautiful inheritance. I bless the Lord who gives me counsel. In the night also my heart instructs me. Because he is at my right hand, I will not be shaken. And I find it so wonderful, Psalm 16, it concludes with these two verses, verse 10 and 11, where it's essentially saying, God will not, he will not abandon your soul. And then verse 11, he's basically saying, God will, God will make known to me the path of life.

10:14 In God's ways that he perseveres us, he will both not do some things for us, and he will certainly do other things on our behalf. Our verse this evening is a reminder to us of something that God will not do, and it's that he will not abandon us in our darkest moments. And it is the great mercy of God that we don't deserve his steadfast faithfulness, and yet he gives it to us. Because we are sinful people.

10:46 Of course, we fail God over and over and over again, right? Yes, we come to church every week. We come to evening service. We sit under God's word. We go to home group. We read great books. We share our faith. We pray with our children. We listen to worship songs in our cars. And we also burst out in anger. We gossip and we slander. We also, we lie. We become obsessed with the way the world sees us. We covet our stature.

11:19 We lust over our status. We hunger and thirst for approval, and we all deserve to be abandoned by a holy God. But he will not abandon you. It's a great mercy of God that though we deserve abandonment, he won't do it. And even when we're at our worst, in our worst moments, we don't deserve for the grace of God to meet us there, and yet he does.

11:52 So maybe you feel like you're in Sheol, in thick darkness, deep shadow, somewhere where light could never penetrate. But friend, you might be there, but you are not abandoned by God. I think about Aisha, who's been struggling for years with Lyme's disease. Many days she can't even get out of bed in pain and discomfort. sick and weak.

12:25 Ms. Janice is so kind to update us and send an email and ask for prayer. But that sure sounds like Sheol to me. But God will not abandon Haisha. I think about April. A single mom struggling with chronic health issues, battering all sorts of hardships, never knowing how she's going to feel the next day. if she's going to have enough strength for tomorrow to do the things that need to be done sounds like she'll but God will not abandon April I think about Sidney Janet Jerry Chris I'm reminded of stories like Ramazan and Shamsia I think about what Kathy McGee went through before the Lord called her home so many in our midst who have found themselves in what they might call Sheol, saying, I didn't know life could be this hard.

13:28 You might be in Sheol, but you are not abandoned there. Others of you here might be in deep darkness or depression, experiencing anxiety or loss. Maybe you're just tangled deep in your own sin and see no real way out. God has not abandoned you either. It's the great mercy of God that though we deserve to be abandoned into darkness, he will not abandon us. And more than that, he will persevere us.

14:00 Point number two, treasure the perseverance of the saints. I don't know, it might feel weird for that to be a point in a sermon. I'm asking you to treasure a doctrine that I'll read here in a minute. But it says, verse 10, for you will not abandon my soul to Sheol or let your Holy One see corruption. God will not abandon us, nor will he even let his children see corruption. Meaning that when God calls you mine, no one can corrupt that. That though you will experience suffering and darkness and all the rest, you won't be corrupted by it.

14:38 God will persevere you. Let me read straight from our statement of faith concerning the perseverance of the saints. We believe that those whom God has accepted in Christ and sanctified by his Holy Spirit will never totally nor finally fall away from the state of grace, but shall certainly persevere to the end. That their persevering attachment to Christ is the grand mark which distinguishes them from superficial professors that a special providence watches over their welfare and that though they may fall through neglect and temptation into sin whereby they grieve the spirit, impair their graces and comforts, bring reproach on the church and temporal judgment on themselves, yet they shall be renewed again unto repentance and be kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation.

15:32 That special providence that it talks about that watches over them, that's a lot of things. Namely in there, it's the Holy Spirit. But it's also promises like this that we have in Scripture. That God will not allow us to be corrupted in that, nor will he abandon us. Now, David is not saying, when he says Holy One, he's referring to himself as being holy because God will make him holy. The Holy One will not see corruption. And corruption is the right word to use there because we will see trial.

16:08 It wouldn't be right to say to keep the Holy One from trial or from suffering or from brokenness or from loss and devastation. It wouldn't be right. Corruption is the right word to use there. We will see bad harvests. We will lose friends. We will lose loved ones. We will see death and disease and all the rest. That special providence watches over their welfare, and though they may fall through neglect and temptation into sin, whereby they grieve the Spirit, impair their graces and comforts, bring reproach on the church and temporal judgment on themselves, that though that may happen, the special providence will not let them see corruption, meaning it won't do you in.

16:53 So treasure that truth, Christian. There's a mighty power of doctrine that the Christian has that we ought to beat our chest with, right? Not in self-confidence, but in confidence that God has promised to keep us from it. And so I'll close with this. I wanted to be able to provide a way to remind us of those things. One, remind us that God won't abandon us, but also that he will keep us from corruption even in our suffering.

17:29 Having spent the last few days thinking through this, I was trying to think of a way to encourage us to remember that. And last night, we were driving home from a friend's house, and we saw this incredible double rainbow. I don't know if anybody else saw it. But it was incredible. I was like the super nerdy dad, like, look at it, guys. And they're like, we see it. It's like, look at it. I'm like leaning forward in the dash. It went from one side of the interstate to the other, just like right over us. It was like Mario Kart, Rainbow Road, like driving straight through it.

18:02 And any time we see a rainbow, we always tell our kids, right? We remind our kids. We ask them, what's the meaning of a rainbow, right? And one of them will say, it's a reminder that God will never flood the earth again. And we talk about how it's a reminder that God always keeps his promises and that he always provides. And it kind of hit me on the drive home. That the best reminder, I think, for us, that God will never abandon you in Sheol, that he will never allow you to go to corruption, the best reminder is your suffering.

18:38 Every time you experience suffering, it would serve you well to train your heart to know that God will bring me through this suffering just like he did the last time and just like he did the time before that and the time before that and the time before that. And maybe your suffering is ongoing. Maybe your suffering is very daily right now. Still, his grace is sufficient for you for the day. You know, Greg said today about the book of John that it comes down to John asking the question, Do you believe this or not?

19:17 And it's true here too. Do you really believe that God will not abandon you in your suffering? Maddie and I often refer to that time in San Francisco as one of the hardest seasons in our life. And when new trials and we experience new sufferings, we remind ourselves that we have suffered before at such cost we didn't even know that it could be. And yet, he remained faithful to us, faithful to see us through in his own good ways.

19:54 God pulled us out of Sheol and kept us from corruption, and he will always do that for all of his children? Do you believe that he will? Let's pray. Father, we read in your word that you will be with us, that you will protect us and provide for us, that you, Father, will help us to persevere through the trials in this life. So, Father, would you use those words that we read, to plant deep roots in our hearts, so that when we suffer, Father, we will be quick to recall and trust in your promises, that you'll never abandon us. We trust you in that, Lord.

20:41 It's in Jesus' name I pray. Amen.