Martin Lloyd-Jones’s “Enjoying the Presence
of God,” a collection of sermons based
on nine Psalms, has provided memory milestones in my ongoing journey of living
in the presence of God. Two of the chapters give light to our current study in
the Psalms, Always in His Presence (Ps.
16) and Seeking the Face of God (Ps. 27).
This week we will look at Psalm 16, with a focus on verse 8 – “I have set the LORD always before me;
because he is at my right hand, I shall not be shaken.” This verse describes
the active seeking of God’s presence and what that active seeking means.
Psalm 16 is a “Messianic” Psalm. Peter, Paul
and the writer of Hebrews quote or reference verse 10 – “For you will not abandon my soul to Sheol, or let your holy one see
corruption.”
“So
David, here, was not only writing about himself; he was writing as a prophet about the ‘Coming one,’ the Son of God, the
Messiah, and therefore, these words can
be appropriated to our Lord Himself…and the secret life of our blessed Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, the Son of God, when
he was here in this world and lived
His life as a man.”(p. 128)
Read the last verse of Psalm 16 as a
confession in a prayer – “You make known
to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your
right hand are pleasures forevermore.” This is a verse where Lloyd-Jones
roots his title for this collection of sermons from the Psalms, “Enjoying the
Presence of God.” “…in your presence
there is fullness of joy,” becomes the context of our considerations of
verse 8.
Lloyd-Jones writes,
“Setting the Lord before me means that I train
and school myself in what the masters
of the spiritual life have called ‘the art of recollection.’ It means that I consciously, deliberately and actively
speak to myself about myself and about my relationship
to God. It means when I wake up in the morning, before I allow myself to think about anything else, I say
to myself, ‘You are a child of God and an
heir of eternity; God knows you and you belong to him’—recollection! Now, I must do that, and do it forcibly, because the
moment I wake up thoughts will come
crowding into my mind, perhaps temptations, perhaps doubts; all sorts of things. But these I brush aside and
deliberately remind myself of God and myself and
my relationship to Him. And I meditate upon that and then I consciously seek the presence of God. To put it another way, I
must practice the presence of God.” (pgs
132, 133)
Read Psalm 16 every day before Community Group
on Wednesday. Reread Psalm 16:8 before you go to bed and then wake up and set
the LORD before you to start the day. Come ready to share active ways to set
God before you to “Practice the presence of God.”
As a bonus, look ahead to Psalm 27:4 “One thing have I asked of the Lord, that
will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my
life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in his temple.”
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