Acts 2:28(v11)You made known to me the ways of life. You will make me full of gladness with your presence.’
Acts 2:27-31(v10)because you will not leave my soul in Hades, neither will you allow your Holy One to see decay. You made known to me the ways of life. You…
Psalms 62:6(v8)He alone is my rock and my salvation, my fortress. I will not be shaken.
Jude 1:24(v11)Now to him who is able to keep them from stumbling, and to present you faultless before the presence of his glory in great joy,
Acts 2:25-28(v8)For David says concerning him, ‘I saw the Lord always before my face, for he is on my right hand, that I should not be moved. Therefore my…
Show all 69 cross-references
Psalms 36:7-8(v11)How precious is your loving kindness, God! The children of men take refuge under the shadow of your wings. They shall be abundantly…
Psalms 73:23(v8)Nevertheless, I am continually with you. You have held my right hand.
Psalms 121:5(v8)Yahweh is your keeper. Yahweh is your shade on your right hand.
Revelation 7:15-17(v11)Therefore they are before the throne of God, they serve him day and night in his temple. He who sits on the throne will spread his…
Ephesians 3:19(v11)and to know Christ’s love which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
Acts 13:35-38(v10)Therefore he says also in another psalm, ‘You will not allow your Holy One to see decay.’ For David, after he had in his own generation…
Psalms 73:26(v8)My flesh and my heart fails, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.
Psalms 21:4-6(v11)He asked life of you and you gave it to him, even length of days forever and ever. His glory is great in your salvation. You lay honor and…
Psalms 110:5(v8)The Lord is at your right hand. He will crush kings in the day of his wrath.
Proverbs 4:18(v11)But the path of the righteous is like the dawning light that shines more and more until the perfect day.
Psalms 17:15(v11)As for me, I shall see your face in righteousness. I shall be satisfied, when I awake, with seeing your form.
Psalms 49:15(v10)But God will redeem my soul from the power of Sheol, for he will receive me.
Psalms 109:31(v8)For he will stand at the right hand of the needy, to save him from those who judge his soul.
Matthew 7:14(v11)How narrow is the gate, and restricted is the way that leads to life! Few are those who find it.
Revelation 1:18(v10)and the Living one. I was dead, and behold, I am alive forever and ever. Amen. I have the keys of Death and of Hades.
Matthew 5:8(v11)Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
2 Corinthians 4:17(v11)For our light affliction, which is for the moment, works for us more and more exceedingly an eternal weight of glory,
Revelation 22:5(v11)There will be no night, and they need no lamp light or sun light; for the Lord God will illuminate them. They will reign forever and ever.
Isaiah 2:3(v11)Many peoples shall go and say, “Come, let’s go up to the mountain of Yahweh, to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us of his…
Acts 2:26(v9)Therefore my heart was glad, and my tongue rejoiced. Moreover my flesh also will dwell in hope;
Proverbs 12:28(v11)In the way of righteousness is life; in its path there is no death.
1 Peter 3:22(v11)who is at the right hand of God, having gone into heaven, angels and authorities and powers being made subject to him.
Romans 8:11(v11)But if the Spirit of him who raised up Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised up Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life…
Hebrews 11:27(v8)By faith, he left Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king; for he endured, as seeing him who is invisible.
Psalms 30:12(v9)to the end that my heart may sing praise to you, and not be silent. Yahweh my God, I will give thanks to you forever!
1 Corinthians 13:12(v11)For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I will know fully, even as I was also fully known.
Psalms 57:8(v9)Wake up, my glory! Wake up, lute and harp! I will wake up the dawn.
Psalms 139:24(v11)See if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the everlasting way.
Psalms 15:5(v8)he who doesn’t lend out his money for usury, nor take a bribe against the innocent. He who does these things shall never be shaken.
Isaiah 14:9(v10)Sheol from beneath has moved for you to meet you at your coming. It stirs up the departed spirits for you, even all the rulers of the…
Matthew 25:33(v11)He will set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left.
1 John 3:2(v11)Beloved, now we are children of God. It is not yet revealed what we will be; but we know that when he is revealed, we will be like him; for…
Revelation 20:13(v10)The sea gave up the dead who were in it. Death and Hades gave up the dead who were in them. They were judged, each one according to his…
Deuteronomy 32:22(v10)For a fire is kindled in my anger, that burns to the lowest Sheol, devours the earth with its increase, and sets the foundations of the…
Psalms 4:7-8(v9)You have put gladness in my heart, more than when their grain and their new wine are increased. In peace I will both lay myself down and…
Psalms 139:18(v8)If I would count them, they are more in number than the sand. When I wake up, I am still with you.
Luke 16:23(v10)In Hades, he lifted up his eyes, being in torment, and saw Abraham far off, and Lazarus at his bosom.
Psalms 108:1(v9)My heart is steadfast, God. I will sing and I will make music with my soul.
Mark 16:19(v11)So then the Lord, after he had spoken to them, was received up into heaven, and sat down at the right hand of God.
Luke 1:35(v10)The angel answered her, “The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. Therefore also the holy one…
Numbers 6:6(v10)“ ‘All the days that he separates himself to Yahweh he shall not go near a dead body.
Job 14:14-15(v9)If a man dies, will he live again? I would wait all the days of my warfare, until my release should come. You would call, and I would…
Job 19:26-27(v9)After my skin is destroyed, then I will see God in my flesh, whom I, even I, will see on my side. My eyes will see, and not as a stranger.…
Psalms 139:8(v10)If I ascend up into heaven, you are there. If I make my bed in Sheol, behold, you are there!
Isaiah 5:14(v10)Therefore Sheol has enlarged its desire, and opened its mouth without measure; and their glory, their multitude, their pomp, and he who…
Luke 10:21-22(v9)In that same hour Jesus rejoiced in the Holy Spirit, and said, “I thank you, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these…
1 Corinthians 15:42(v10)So also is the resurrection of the dead. The body is sown perishable; it is raised imperishable.
1 Corinthians 15:50-55(v10)Now I say this, brothers, that flesh and blood can’t inherit God’s Kingdom; neither does the perishable inherit imperishable. Behold, I…
1 Thessalonians 4:13-14(v9)But we don’t want you to be ignorant, brothers, concerning those who have fallen asleep, so that you don’t grieve like the rest, who have…
Leviticus 19:28(v10)“ ‘You shall not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead, nor tattoo any marks on you. I am Yahweh.
Job 11:8(v10)They are high as heaven. What can you do? They are deeper than Sheol. What can you know?
Psalms 9:17(v10)The wicked shall be turned back to Sheol, even all the nations that forget God.
Proverbs 15:11(v10)Sheol and Abaddon are before Yahweh— how much more then the hearts of the children of men!
Proverbs 27:20(v10)Sheol and Abaddon are never satisfied; and a man’s eyes are never satisfied.
Isaiah 26:19(v9)Your dead shall live. My dead bodies shall arise. Awake and sing, you who dwell in the dust; for your dew is like the dew of herbs, and the…
Daniel 9:24(v10)“Seventy weeks are decreed on your people and on your holy city, to finish disobedience, and to make an end of sins, and to make…
Amos 9:2(v10)Though they dig into Sheol, there my hand will take them; and though they climb up to heaven, there I will bring them down.
Matthew 25:46(v11)These will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”
Luke 4:34(v10)saying, “Ah! what have we to do with you, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are: the Holy One of God!”
Acts 3:14-15(v10)But you denied the Holy and Righteous One and asked for a murderer to be granted to you, and killed the Prince of life, whom God raised…
James 3:5-9(v9)So the tongue is also a little member, and boasts great things. See how a small fire can spread to a large forest! And the tongue is a…
Proverbs 2:19(v11)None who go to her return again, neither do they attain to the paths of life.
Proverbs 14:32(v9)The wicked is brought down in his calamity, but in death, the righteous has a refuge.
1 Peter 1:21(v11)who through him are believers in God, who raised him from the dead, and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope might be in God.
Cross-references from openbible.info (CC BY 4.0)
Explain this passage (21 sources)
Historical commentary, presented as a primary source — not an endorsement.
John Calvin1540 · Public DomainOn vv8–118. I have set Jehovah, etc. The Psalmist again…
8. I have set Jehovah, etc. The Psalmist again shows the firmness and stability of his faith. To set God before us is nothing else than to keep all our senses bound and captive, that they may not run out and go astray after any other object. We must look to him with other eyes than those of the flesh, for we shall seldom be able to perceive him unless we elevate our minds above the world; and faith prevents us from turning our back upon him. The meaning, therefore, is, that David kept his mind so intently fixed upon the providence of God, as to be fully persuaded, that whenever any difficulty or distress should befall him, God would be always at hand to assist him. He adds, also, continually, to show us how he constantly depended upon the assistance of God, so that, amidst the various conflicts with which he was agitated, no fear of danger could make him turn his eyes to any other quarter than to God in search of succor. And thus we ought so to depend upon God as to continue to be fully persuaded of his being near to us, even when he seems to be removed to the greatest distance from us. When we shall have thus turned our eyes towards him, the masks and the vain illusions of this world will no longer deceive us.
Because he is at my right hand. I read this second clause as a distinct sentence from the preceding. To connect them together as some do in this way, I have set the Lord continually before me, because he is at my right hand, would give a meagre meaning to the words, and take away much of the truth which is taught in them, as it would make David to say, that he measured God’s presence according to the experience he had of it; a mode of speaking which would not be at all becoming. I consider, therefore, the words, I have set the Lord continually before me, as a complete sentence, and David set the Lord before him for the purpose of constantly repairing to him in all his dangers. For his greater encouragement to hope well, he sets before himself what it is to have God’s assistance and fatherly care, namely, that it implies his keeping firm and unmoved his own people with whom he is present. David then reckons himself secure against all dangers, and promises himself certain safety, because, with the eyes of faith, he beholds God as present with him. From this passage we are furnished with an argument which overthrows the fabrication of the Sorbonists, The Doctors of the Sorbonne, a university in Paris.
John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.
Geneva Bible translators1599 · Public DomainOn vv8–11The faithful are sure to persevere to the end.
The faithful are sure to persevere to the end.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp1656 · Public DomainOn vv8–11Psa 16:8 I have set the LORD always before…
Psa 16:8 I have set the LORD always before me: because [he is] at my right hand, I shall not be moved.
Ver. 8. I have set the Lord always before me] Heb. I have equally set, or proposed. The apostle translateth it, "I foresee the Lord always before my face," Act 2:25. I set the eye of my faith full upon him, and suffer it not to take to other things; I look him in the face, oculo irretorto, as the eagle looketh upon the sun; and oculo adamantino, with an eye of adamant, which turns only to one point; so here, I have equally set the Lord before me, without irregular affections and passions. And this was one of those lessons that his reins had taught him, that the Holy Spirit had dictated unto him.
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Because he is as my right hand] To help me that I fall not, saith R. David, or as a thing that I cannot but remember, as being of continual use to me. It is as necessary to remember God, as to draw breath, saith Chrysostom.
I shall not be moved] i.e. Not greatly moved, as Psa 62:2. Though Satan stand at the right hand of a godly man, to resist and annoy him, Zec 3:1, yet so long as God is at his right hand, to assist and comfort him, and he at God’s right hand, Psa 45:9 (which is a place of honour and safety), he cannot be moved. The gates of hell shall never prevail; Christ, our Samson, hath flung them off their hinges.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole1685 · Public DomainOn vv8–11i.e. I have always presented him to my mind…
i.e. I have always presented him to my mind as my rule and scope, as my witness and judge, as my patron and protector, in the discharge of my office, and in all my actions. Hitherto David seems to have spoken in his own person, and with special respect to himself; but now he seems to have been transported by a higher, inspiration of the Spirit of prophecy, and to be carried above himself, and to have an eye to the man Christ Jesus, who is and was the end of the law, and the great scope of all the prophets, and to speak of himself only as a type of Christ, and with more special respect unto Christ, in whom this and the following verses were much more truly and fully accomplished than in himself. Christ as man did always set his Father’s will and glory before him, as he himself oft declareth, especially in St. John’s Gospel.
He is at my right hand, to wit, to strengthen me, (for the right hand is the chief seat of a man’s strength, and, instrument of action,) to protect, assist, and comfort me, as this phrase signifies, Psa 119:31; 90:5. And this assistance of God was necessary to Christ as man.
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I shall not be moved, or, removed, either from the discharge of my duty, or from the attainment of that glory and happiness which is prepared for me. Though the archers shoot grievously at me, and both men and devils seek my destruction, and God sets himself against me as an enemy, withdrawing his favour from me, and filling me with deadly sorrows, through the sense of his anger; yet I do not despair, but am assured that God will deliver me out of all my distresses.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Matthew Henry1710 · Public DomainOn v8All these verses are quoted by St. Peter in…
All these verses are quoted by St. Peter in his first sermon, after the pouring out of the Spirit on the day of pentecost (Act 2:25-28); and he tells us expressly that David in them speaks concerning Christ and particularly of his resurrection. Something we may allow here of the workings of David's own pious and devout affections towards God, depending upon his grace to perfect every thing that concerned him, and looking for the blessed hope, and happy state on the other side death, in the enjoyment of God; but in these holy elevations towards God and heaven he was carried by the spirit of prophecy quite beyond the consideration of himself and his own case, to foretel the glory of the Messiah, in such expressions as were peculiar to that, and could not be understood of himself. The New Testament furnishes us with a key to let us into the mystery of these lines.
I. These verses must certainly be applied to Christ; of him speaks the prophet this, as did many of the Old Testament prophets, who testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ and the glory that should follow (Pe1 1:11), and that is the subject of this prophecy here. It is foretold (as he himself showed concerning this, no doubt, among other prophecies in this psalm, Luk 24:44, Luk 24:46) that Christ should suffer, and rise from the dead, Co1 15:3, Co1 15:4.
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1. That he should suffer and die. This is implied here when he says (Psa 16:8), I shall not be moved; he supposed that he should be struck at, and have a dreadful shock given him, as he had in his agony, when his soul was exceedingly sorrowful, and he prayed that the cup might pass from him. When he says, "My flesh shall rest," it is implied that he must put off the body, and therefore must go through the pains of death. It is likewise plainly intimated that his soul must go into a state of separation from the body, and that his body, so deserted, would be in imminent danger of seeing corruption - that he should not only die, but be buried, and abide for some time under the power of death.
2. That he should be wonderfully borne up by the divine power in suffering and dying. (1.) That he should not be moved, should not be driven off from his undertaking nor sink under the weight of it, that he should not fail nor be discouraged (Isa 42:4), but should proceed and persevere in it, till he could say, It is finished. Though the service was hard and the encounter hot, and he trod the winepress alone, yet he was not moved, did not give up the cause, but set his face as a flint, Isa 50:7-9. Here am I, let these go their way. Nay, (2.) That his heart should rejoice and his glory be glad, that he should go on with his undertaking, not only resolutely, but cheerfully, and with unspeakable pleasure and satisfaction, witness that saying (Joh 17:11), Now I am no more in the world, but I come to thee, and that (Joh 18:11), The cup that my Father has given me, shall I not drink it? and many the like. By his glory is meant his tongue, as appears, Act 2:26. For our tongue is our glory, and never more so than when it is employed in glorifying God. Now there were three things which bore him up and carried him on thus cheerfully: - [1.] The respect he had to his Father's will and glory in what he did: I have set the Lord always before me. He still had an eye to his Father's commandment (Joh 10:18, Joh 14:31), the will of him that sent him. He aimed at his Father's honour and the restoring of the interests of his kingdom among men, and this kept him from being moved by the difficulties he met with; for he always did those things that pleased his Father. [2.] The assurance he had of his Father's presence with him in his sufferings: He is at my right hand, a present help to me, nigh at hand in the time of need. He is near that justifieth me (Isa 50:8); he is at my right hand, to direct and strengthen it, and hold it up, Psa 89:21. When he was in his agony an angel was sent from heaven to strengthen him, Luk 22:43. To this the victories and triumphs of the cross were all owing; it was the Lord at his right hand that struck through kings, Psa 110:5; Isa 42:1, Isa 42:2. [3.] The prospect he had of a glorious issue of his sufferings. It was for the joy set before him that he endured the cross, Heb 12:2. He rested in hope, and that made his rest glorious, Isa 11:10. He knew he should be justified in the Spirit by his resurrection, and straightway glorified. See Joh 13:31, Joh 13:32.
3. That he should be brought through his sufferings, and brought from under the power of death by a glorious resurrection. (1.) That his soul should not be left in hell, that is, his human spirit should not be long left, as other men's spirits are, in a state of separation from the body, but should, in a little time, return and be re-united to it, never to part again. (2.) That being God's holy One in a peculiar manner, sanctified to the work of redemption and perfectly free from sin, he should not see corruption nor feel it. This implies that he should not only be raised from the grave, but raised so soon that his dead body should not so much as being to corrupt, which, in the course of nature, it would have done if it had not been raised the third day. We, who have so much corruption in our souls, must expect that our bodies also will corrupt (Job 24:19); but that holy One of God who knew no sin saw no corruption. Under the law it was strictly ordered that those parts of the sacrifices which were not burnt upon the altar should by no means be kept till the third day, lest they should putrefy (Lev 7:15, Lev 7:18), which perhaps pointed at Christ's rising the third day, that he might not see corruption - neither was a bone of him broken.
4. That he should be abundantly recompensed for his sufferings, with the joy set before him, Psa 16:11. he was well assured, (1.) That he should not miss of his glory: "Thou wilt show me the path of life, and lead me to that life through this darksome valley." In confidence of this, when he gave up the ghost, he said, Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit; and, a little before, Father, glorify me with thy own self. (2.) That he should be received into the presence of God, to sit at his right hand. His being admitted into God's presence would be the acceptance of his service and his being set at his right hand the recompence of it. (3.) Thus, as a reward for the sorrows he underwent for our redemption, he should have a fulness of joy, and pleasures for evermore; not only the glory he had with God, as God, before all worlds, but the joy and pleasure of a Mediator, in seeing his seed, and the success and prosperity of his undertaking, Isa 53:10, Isa 53:11.
II. Christ being the Head of the body, the church, these verses may, for the most part, be applied to all good Christians, who are guided and animated by the Spirit of Christ; and, in singing them, when we have first given glory to Christ, in whom, to our everlasting comfort, they have had their accomplishment, we may then encourage and edify ourselves and one another with them, and may hence learn, 1. That it is our wisdom and duty to set the Lord always before us, and to see him continually at our right hand, wherever we are, to eye him as our chief good and highest end, our owner, ruler, and judge, our gracious benefactor, our sure guide and strict observer; and, while we do thus, we shall not be moved either from our duty or from our comfort. Blessed Paul set the Lord before him, when, though bonds and afflictions did await him, he could bravely say, None of these things move me, Act 20:24. 2. That, if our eyes be ever towards God, our hearts and tongues may ever rejoice in him; it is our own fault if they do not. If the heart rejoice in God, out of the abundance of that let the mouth speak, to his glory, and the edification of others. 3. That dying Christians, as well as a dying Christ, may cheerfully put off the body, in a believing expectation of a joyful resurrection: My flesh also shall rest in hope. Our bodies have little rest in this world, but in the grave they shall rest as in their beds, Isa 57:2. We have little to hope for from this life, but we shall rest in hope of a better life; we may put off the body in that hope. Death destroys the hope of man (Job 14:19), but not the hope of a good Christian, Pro 14:32. He has hope in his death, living hopes in dying moments, hopes that the body shall not be left for ever in the grave, but, though it see corruption for a time, it shall, at the end of the time, be raised to immortality; Christ's resurrection is an earnest of ours if we be his. 4. That those who live piously with God in their eye may die comfortably with heaven in their eye. In this world sorrow is our lot, but in heaven there is joy. All our joys here are empty and defective, but in heaven there is a fulness of joy. Our pleasures here are transient and momentary, and such is the nature of them that it is not fit they should last long; but those at God's right hand are pleasures for evermore; for they are the pleasures of immortal souls in the immediate vision and fruition of an eternal God.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Gill1763 · Public DomainOn vv8–11I have set the Lord always before me, Not…
I have set the Lord always before me, Not his fear only, or the book of the law, as Jarchi interprets it, but the Lord himself; or, "I foresaw the Lord always before my face", Act 2:26; as Christ is set before men in the Gospel, to look unto as the object of faith and hope, to trust in and depend upon for life and salvation; so Jehovah the Father is the object which Christ set before him, and looked unto in the whole course of his life here on earth; he had always an eye to his glory, as the ultimate end of all his actions; and to his will, his orders, and commands, as the rule of them; and to his purposes, and counsel, and covenant, to accomplish them; and to his power, truth, and faithfulness, to assist, support, and encourage him in all his difficulties and most distressed circumstances;
because he is at my right hand: to counsel and instruct, to help, protect, and defend: the phrase is expressive of the nearness of God to Christ, his presence with him, and readiness to assist and stand by him against all his enemies; see Psa 109:31; so the Targum paraphrases it, "because his Shechinah rests upon me";
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I shall not be moved: as he was not from his place and nation, from the duty of his office, and the execution of it, by all the threats and menaces of men; nor from the fear, worship, and service of God, by all the temptations of Satan; nor from the cause of his people he had espoused, by all the terrors of death, the flaming sword of justice, and the wrath of God; but, in the midst and view of all, stood unshaken and unmoved; see Isa 42:4.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley1765 · Public DomainOn vv8–11I have set - I have always presented him…
I have set - I have always presented him to my mind, as my witness and judge, as my patron and protector. Hitherto David seems to have spoken with respect to himself, but now he is transported by the spirit of prophecy, and carried above himself, to speak as a type of Christ, in whom this and the following verses were truly accomplished. Christ as man did always set his father's will and glory before him. Right-hand - To strengthen, protect, assist, and comfort me: as this assistance of God was necessary to Christ as man. Moved - Though the archers shoot grievously at me, and both men and devils seek my destruction, and God sets himself against me as an enemy, yet I am assured he will deliver me out of all my distresses.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke1810 · Public DomainOn vv8–11Verse 8. I have set the Lord always before…
Verse 8. I have set the Lord always before me] This verse, and all to the end of Ps 16:11, are applied by St. Peter to the death and resurrection of Christ. Ac 2:25, c.
In all that our Lord did, said, or suffered, he kept the glory of the Father and the accomplishment of his purpose constantly in view. He tells us that he did not come down from heaven to do his own will, but the will of the Father who had sent him. See Joh 17:4.
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He is at my right hand] That is, I have his constant presence, approbation, and support. All this is spoken by Christ as man.
I shall not be moved.] Nothing can swerve me from my purpose nothing can prevent me from fulfilling the Divine counsel, in reference to the salvation of men.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson1811 · Public DomainOn vv8–11Psa 16:8. I have set the Lord always before…
Psa 16:8. I have set the Lord always before me — I have always presented him to my mind as my witness and judge, as my patron and protector, in the discharge of my office, and in all my actions. Hitherto David seems to have spoken chiefly in his own person, and with special regard to himself, but now he appears to be transported by the Spirit of prophecy, to be carried above himself, and to have an eye to the man Christ Jesus only, who is, and was, the end of the law, and the great subject and scope of all the prophecies. In other words, having hitherto spoken of himself as a member, he now begins to speak of himself as a type of Christ, in whom this, and the following verses, were truly and fully accomplished. Christ, as man, did always set his Father’s will and glory before him, as he himself often declares: see Joh 10:18; Joh 14:31. He is at my right hand — To strengthen, protect, assist, and comfort me. And this assistance of God was necessary to Christ as man. I shall not be moved — Either from the discharge of my duty, or from the attainment of that glory and happiness which are prepared for me. Though archers shoot grievously at me, and both men and devils seek my destruction, and God sets himself against me as an enemy; yet I am assured, he will deliver me from all my distresses.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes1834 · Public DomainOn vv8–11I have set the Lord always before me -…
I have set the Lord always before me - By night as well as by day; in my private meditations as well as in my public professions. I have regarded myself always as in the presence of God; I have endeavored always to feel that, his eye was upon me. This, too, is one of the certain characteristics of piety, that we always feel that we are in the presence of God, and that we always act as if his eye were upon us. Compare the notes at Act 2:25.
Because he is at my right hand - The right hand was regarded as the post of honor and dignity, but it is also mentioned as a position of defense or protection. To have one at our right hand is to have one near us who can defend us. Thus, in Psa 109:31, “He shall stand at the right hand of the poor, to save him,” etc. So Psa 110:5, “The Lord at thy right hand shall strike through kings in the day of his wrath.” Psa 121:5, “the Lord is thy Keeper; the Lord is thy shade upon thy right hand.” The idea is, that as we use the right hand in our “own” defense, we seem to have an additional and a needed helper when one is at our right hand. The sense here is, that the psalmist felt that God, as his Protector, was always near him; always ready to interpose for his defense. We have a somewhat similar expression when we say of anyone that he is “at hand;” that is, he is near us.
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I shall not be moved - I shall be safe; I shall not be disturbed by fear; I shall be protected from my enemies. See Psa 10:6; Psa 15:5. Compare Psa 46:5. The language here is that of one who has confidence in God in time of great calamities, and who feels that he is safe under the divine favor and protection.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown1871 · Public DomainOn vv8–11With God's presence and aid he is sure of…
With God's presence and aid he is sure of safety (Psa 10:6; Psa 15:5; Joh 12:27-28; Heb 5:7-8).
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon1874 · Public DomainOn vv8–118. Set the Lord always before me—Acting as under…
8. Set the Lord always before me—Acting as under his eye, and “as seeing Him who is invisible,” Heb_11:27.
At my right hand— Close to me, and at the place for most opportune aid. This and the following verses are Messianic and evangelical in the highest sense. (See Act_2:25; and note.) As such, the interpretation must proceed upon a literal and historic sense only so far as that is an ectype of the prophetic and spiritual. It is impossible to compress the language of these verses within the limits of the personal history of David.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges1878 · Public DomainOn vv8–118. The true ‘practice of the Presence of God’…
8. The true ‘practice of the Presence of God’ (Psa_119:30; Psa_18:22). The LXX has, I beheld the Lord always before my face.
at my right hand] As advocate (Psa_109:31), or champion (Psa_110:5; Psa_121:5). A warrior defending another person would naturally stand on his right.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers1878 · Public DomainOn vv8–11(8) At my right hand.—Comp. Psa_109:31; Psa_110:5; Psa_121:5. The…
(8) At my right hand.—Comp. Psa_109:31; Psa_110:5; Psa_121:5. The image seems to be a military one: the shield of the right-hand comrade is a protection to the man beside him.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary1880 · Public DomainOn vv8–11I have set the Lord always before me. I…
I have set the Lord always before me. I have brought myself, that is, to realize the continual presence of God, alike in happiness and in trouble. I feel him to be ever with me. Because he is at my right hand (i.e. close to me, ready to protect and save), therefore I shall not be moved. Nothing will shake me or disturb me from my trust and confidence.
Vers. 8-11. The confidence of the psalmist"s faith in the future.
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The two main ideas of the writer are
(1) a sense of Divine privilege in having God as his chief Good; and
(2) a confiding, hopeful prayer for deliverance from death.
Not, of course, from death altogether; he could not hope to be finally delivered from the grave. The prayer therefore, must have been for deliverance, from impending, danger, from death that was then. threatened at that time, and for being conducted into and preserved in "the path of life." The application which has been made of the ninth and tenth verses to Christ by Peter and Paul has led to a misunderstanding of the original sense. They say that the prayer was fulfilled in Christ, and not in David; that David did see corruption, and that Christ did not. But the best Hebrew scholars say that it is a confident prayer, not to be given over to death, but to be preserved in the way of life. We must understand, of course, death at present; for it could not mean death altogether, nor deliverance from the grave after death. The general subject of these verses, then, is The confidence of the psalmists faith in the future, because he had chosen God as his chief Good.
I THE SENSE OF GOD"S PRESENCE INSPIRES A FEELING OF SAFETY. (Ver. 8) "Not in the moment of peril only, but at all times has he his eye fixed upon God." "God in David"s eyes is no abstraction, but a Person, real, living, and walking at his side," and able to protect him from danger. Have we such a sense of companionship with God? I shall not be moved neither in character, nor in purpose, nor in work.
II HE REJOICED IS THE CONFIDENCE THAT GOD WOULD NOT ALLOW HIM TO PERISH. (Vers. 9, 10) "Flesh" here, as always, means the living body never means a corpse. "Shall rest in hope," equivalent to "shall dwell in safety;" and must be understood of this life. No stress can be laid on the word "leave," which means "give over to." He is expressing the confidence "that God will not leave him to perish, will not give him up to be the prey of the grave, which was the design of his enemies. The lessons for us that God"s time is our time, and that he will not abandon us to our spiritual enemies, but will afford us effectual protection.
III HE REJOICED THAT GOD WOULD MAKE KNOWN TO HIM THE WAY TO LIFE. (Ver. 11) Not only preserve him in life, but lead him on to that life whose joy is beholding the Divine face, and partaking of the everlasting pleasures which are at his right hand. The idea of immortality springs out of the sense of his relationship to God; for he could not think that such a relationship could end with death. If we are the sons of God, that is the strongest guarantee that we shall continue to partake of God"s life, rich and manifold and everlasting. Christ said, "Because I live, ye shall live also." This passage has its highest fulfilment when applied to the resurrection of Christ. S.
The supreme choice of the soul.
"I have set the Lord always before me: because he is at my right hand, I shall not be moved." "I have set Christ always before me: because he is at my right hand, I shall not be moved.
I THIS IS TO MAKE THE JOURNEY OF LIFE FULL OF LIGHT. Pillar of cloud and fire. And this, in whatever view you look at this life whether as a stage on which work has to be done, or on which good has to be acquired, or as a journey to reach our destiny. By this light we can clearly see the nature of the work that must be done; the kind of good that must be sought; and the glorious destiny awaiting us. But let a man make himself or the world the light by which he walks, the guide he follows, then his work, his well-being, and the future all become dark. Some dark moments there will be, when God"s way is through the clouds or through the great deep.
II THIS WILL MAKE US TRULY STRONG. "I shall not be moved." We may know duty, self-interest, and the way to honour, and yet be too weak to follow them. Weakness of purpose and will is our misery and guilt. It is not merely our misfortune, but our sin. Importance of strength. Be strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might." The only way to become strong is by "looking unto Jesus." All other stimulants soon spend their strength and leave us prostrate. But the setting God always before us will endow us with all strength to resist all temptations, and all fortitude to endure.
III THIS IS TO MAKE THE AIM OF LIFE REALLY GREAT. Our lives are mostly paltry and little. We go about filled with little vanities and ambitions, aiming at little ends, and content with little results. Often under the guise of humility our larger aims are mostly of the depraved or secular sort wealth; social position; fame on the battlefield, or in the senate, or in literature. But to "have God always before us" is the real lasting greatness. This is the only true ideal of life.
IV THIS IS TO MAKE THE WAY OF LIFE SECURE. "Because he is at my right hand, I shall not be moved.
1. Not moved with fear.
2. Not moved from his hope.
3. Not moved from his righteousness. S.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Charles H. Spurgeon1885 · Public DomainOn vv8–11Ver. 8. The fear of death at one time…
Ver. 8. The fear of death at one time cast its dark shadow over the soul of the Redeemer, and we read that, "he was heard in that he feared." There appeared unto him an angel, strengthening him; perhaps the heavenly messenger reassured him of his glorious resurrection as his people's surety, and of the eternal joy into which he should admit the flock redeemed by blood. Then hope shone full upon our Lord's soul, and, as recorded in these verses, he surveyed the future with holy confidence because he had a continued eye to Jehovah, and enjoyed his perpetual presence. He felt that, thus sustained, he could never be driven from his life's grand design; nor was he, for he stayed not his hand till he could say, "It is finished." What an infinite mercy was this for us! In this immovableness, caused by simple faith in the divine help, Jesus is to be viewed as our exemplar; to recognize the presence of the Lord is the duty of every believer;
I have set the Lord always before me; and to trust the Lord as our champion and guard is the privilege of every saint;
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because he is at my right hand, I shall not be moved. The apostle translates this passage, "I foresaw the Lord always before my face; " Ac 2:25; the eye of Jesus' faith could discern beforehand the continuance of divine support to his suffering Son, in such a degree that he should never be moved from the accomplishment of his purpose of redeeming his people. By the power of God at his right hand he foresaw that he should smite through all who rose up against him, and on that power he placed the firmest reliance.
Ver. 8. I have set the Lord always before me. David did not by fits and starts set the Lord before him; but he "always" set the Lord before him in his course; he had his eye upon the Lord, and so much the Hebrew word imports: I have equally set the Lord before me; that is the force of the original word, that is, I have set the Lord before me, at one time as well as another, without any irregular affections or passions, etc. In every place, in every condition, in every company, in every employment, and in every enjoyment, I have set the Lord equally before me; and this raised him, and this will raise any Christian, by degrees, to a very great height of holiness. Thomas Brooks.
Ver. 8. I have set the Lord always before me. Hebrew, I have equally set, or proposed. The apostle translates it, "I foresaw the Lord always before my face." Ac 2:25. I set the eye of my faith full upon him, and suffer it not to take to other things; I look him in the face, oculo irretorto, as the eagle looketh upon the sun; and oculo adamantino, with an eye of adamant, which turns only to one point: so here, I have equally set the Lord before me, without irregular affections and passions. And this was one of those lessons that his reins had taught him, that the Holy Spirit had dictated unto him. John Trapp.
Ver. 8. I have set the Lord ALWAYS before me. Like as the gnomon doth ever behold the north star, whether it be closed and shut up in a coffer of gold, silver, or wood, never losing its nature; so a faithful Christian man, whether he abound in wealth or be pinched with poverty, whether he be of high or low degree in this world, ought continually to have his faith and hope surely built and grounded upon Christ, and to have his heart and mind fast fixed and settled in him, and to follow him through thick and thin, through fire and water, through wars and peace, through hunger and cold, through friends and foes, through a thousand perils and dangers, through the surges and waves of envy, malice, hatred, evil speeches, railing sentences, contempt of the world, flesh, and devil, and even in death itself, be it never so bitter, cruel, and tyrannical, yet never to lose sight and view of Christ, never to give over faith, hope, and trust in him. Robert Cawdray.
Ver. 8. I have set the Lord always before me. By often thinking of God, the heart will be enticed into desires after him. Isa 26:8. "The desire of our soul is to thy name, and to the remembrance of thee; "and see what follows, Isa 26:9: "With my soul have I desired thee in the night; yea, with my spirit within me will I seek thee early." Love sets the soul on musing, and from musing to praying. Meditation is prayer in bullion, prayer in the oresoon melted and run into holy desires. The laden cloud soon drops into rain; the piece charged soon goes off when fire is put to it. A meditating soul is in proxima potentia to prayer. William Gurnall.
Ver. 8. I have set the Lord always before me, etc. He that by faith eyes God continually as his protector in trouble shall not be moved with any evil that he suffers, and he that eyes God by faith as his pattern in holiness, shall not be moved from doing that which is good. This thoughtthe Lord is at our right hand keeps us from turning either to the right hand or to the left. It is said of Enoch, that "he walked with God" (Ge 5:22), and though the history of his life be very short, yet it is said of him a second time (Ge 5:24), that "he walked with God." He walked so much with God that he walked as God: he did not "walk" (which kind of walking the apostle reproves, 1Co 3:3), "as men." He walked so little like the world, that his stay was little in the world. "He was not, "saith the text, "for God took him." He took him from the world to himself, or, as the author to the Hebrews reports it, "he was translated that he should not see death, for he had this testimony, that he pleased God." Joseph Caryl.
Ver. 8. Because he is at my right hand, etc. Of ourselves we stand not at any time, by his power we may overcome at all times. And when we are sorest assaulted he is ever ready at our right hand to support and stay us that we shall not fall. He hath well begun, and shall happily go forward in his work, who hath in truth begun. For true grace well planted in the heart, how weak soever, shall hold out for ever. All total decays come from thisthat the heart was never truly mollified, nor grace deeply and kindly rooted therein. John Ball.
Ver. 8. He is at my right hand. This phrase of speech is borrowed from those who, when they take upon them the patronage, defence, or tuition of any, will set them on their right hand, as in place of most safeguard. Experience confirmeth this in children, who in any imminent danger shroud and shelter themselves under their father's arms or hands, as under a sufficient buckler. Such was the estate of the man of God, as here appeareth, who was hemmed and hedged in with the power of God, both against present evils, and dangers to come. Richard Greenham.
Ver. 8. Even as a column or pillar is sometimes on thy right hand, and sometimes on thy left hand, because thou dost change thy standing, sitting or walking, for it is unmovable and keepeth one place; so God is sometimes favourable and bountiful unto thee, and sometimes seemeth to be wroth and angry with thee, because thou dost fall from virtue to vice, from obedience and humility to pride and presumption; for in the Lord there is no change, no, not so much as any shadow of change. He is immutable, always one and everlasting. If thou wilt bend thyself to obedience, and to a virtuous and godly life, thou shalt ever have him a strong rock, whereupon you may boldly build a castle and tower of defence. He will be unto thee a mighty pillar, bearing up heaven and earth, whereto you may lean and not be deceived, wherein you may trust and not be disappointed. He will ever be at thy right hand, that thou shalt not fall. He will take thy part, and will mightily defend thee against all enemies of thy body and of thy soul; but if thou wilt shake hands with virtue, and bid it adieu and farewell, and, forsaking the ways of God, wilt live as thou list, and follow thy own corruption, and make no conscience of aught thou doest, defiling and blemishing thyself with all manner of sin and iniquity, then be sure the Lord will appear unto thee in his fury and indignation. From his justice and judgments none shall ever be able to deliver thee. Robert Cawdray.
Ver. 8. Set the Lord always before you as
1. Your protector.
2. Your leader.
3. Your example.
4. Your observer.
William Jay.
Ver. 8-9. A sense of the divine presence our best support. It yields,
1. Good confidence concerning things without. I shall not be moved.
2. Good cheer within. My heart is glad.
3. Good music for the living tongue. My glory rejoiceth.
4. Good hope for the dying body. My flesh also, etc.
Psalms 16:9*
Ver. 8-9. A sense of the divine presence our best support. It yields,
1. Good confidence concerning things without. I shall not be moved.
2. Good cheer within. My heart is glad.
3. Good music for the living tongue. My glory rejoiceth.
4. Good hope for the dying body. My flesh also, etc.
Charles H. Spurgeon's The Treasury of David (1869–1885) — public domain. Psalms only. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
The Biblical Illustrator1887 · Public DomainOn vv8–11I have set the Lord always before me.
Psa_16:8
I have set the Lord always before me.
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Facing God
Convictions are of two kinds. They are born of emergencies and experience. The former are instinctive, springing into life full grown. The latter mature slowly. A ship strikes a rock and begins to sink. The conviction of danger, and of possible destruction, takes shape at once in the minds of all on board. This is the conviction of emergency, But the conviction of a mans worth must come by experience, and must wait long for its maturity. Belief is not conviction, but only its germ. Conviction is faith in fruition, which takes time. The text is the utterance of such conviction, and it is the keynote of the whole Psalm.
I. It is of the greatest importance what that is which is continually before us. That which is constantly in a mans eye must help very largely to shape him. I have heard a very significant criticism on a certain picture, to the effect that, though it was a good piece of artistic work, it was not a good picture to live with. You would not wish to have hanging up in your sitting room, and constantly in sight of your children, a picture of Herodias with the head of John the Baptist, or of a crazed mother in the act of murdering her babe. You try to keep pictures of wholesome subjects as well as of beautiful forms before your childrens eyes; because you know that they are insensibly educated by familiarity with such things. In an age of few books, men and women learned mostly by the eye. It was not wholly nor mostly idolatry which filled the old churches up with pictures. The visitor to St. Marks, in Venice, may follow for himself the footsteps of the earlier catechumen; ]passing into the Christian temple through a vestibule of Old Testament history wrought in mosaic pictures, and then reading on the walls and domes within the truths of crucifixion, resurrection, the baptism of the Spirit, and the coming of the Lord to judgment,--all arranged in the order of Christian thought. The peasant who passed over the old wooden bridge over the torrent at Lucerne had daffy before him, in the painted compartments of the bridge, a reminder of that other stream which all must cross sooner or later. Nature sets her mark on character. If her surroundings are gloomy and savage they impart a sombre tone to the men who live among them:--Men tend to be narrowed or broadened by their daily task. The man who has columns of figures forever before him may easily degenerate into a mere calculating machine. If the thing which is constantly before us is larger and better than ourselves, its hourly presence rebukes our littleness and our badness, and works to assimilate us to itself. If it is worse than ourselves it draws downward. There was philosophy as well as enthusiasm in the apostles exhortation to run, looking unto Jesus, and in Paul keeping his eye on the prize of his high calling, and reaching forth to that which is before.
II. But it may be asked, is not God always before us? Can we help its being so? Assuredly we can. David does not say, The Lord is always, etc., but, I have set Him always, etc. His own will and act have had something to do with the matter. He has been at pains to bring God into the foreground, and to keep Him there. Because God is ever manifesting Himself, because every common bush is afire with Him, it does not follow that men recognise the fact. They do not. There is abundance of sweet music, but there are multitudes of people to whom it means no more than the rumble of the carts in the streets.
III. Thus, then, God will not be in any true sense before our face unless we set Him there. It needs special training, determination, and practice. There is a spiritual inertia to be overcome, and a perverse tendency. The bar of steel does not point naturally to the pole, but anywhere. It must be acted on from without, must have magnetic virtue imparted to it. And persistency is needed. I have set the Lord always before me. It was not enough that once or twice God was in the line of vision, He was to be kept there. A compass needle would be to a sailor of no more account than a knitting needle, if only by some shock it were made to point northwards. It is the fact of its always pointing there that gives it its value. And it is this fact of persistence which gives value to Davids saying. When a man has shut himself up to one thing as the source and strength of his happiness he will find out a great deal about that one thing. Thus did Robinson Crusoe, when he found out that he should have to live on his island. And so is it with men and God.
IV. Many are the discoveries which the man who sets the Lord always before him will make.
1. He finds Him self-revealed. In the Shinto temples in Japan the shrines contain no altars, pulpits, or pictures, but only a circular steel mirror. What it means is not known. But it would be an appropriate symbol for a Christian shrine. James draws a picture of a man beholding his natural face in a glass. The man who studies God studies self at the same time.
2. It carries with it a power of growth. For God is ever going before us and beckoning us on. A mountain is a constant temptation to climb, and when we find yet higher summits beyond we want to climb them also. And so is it in learning of God.
3. It engenders hope. Amid the darkness and vagueness of the Old Testament future, this Psalm is like a sweet flute note amid the crash and discord of a vast orchestra. I know of nothing more soothing than these verses. I shall not be moved; all is well, because He is at my right hand. (Marvin Vincent, D. D.)
The earthly and heavenly forms of companionship with God
Now, the two expressions, before me and in Thy presence, are substantially synonymous and convertible. Notice the other clause. He is at my right hand. At Thy right hand are pleasures for evermore. God before my face, and I before Gods face; God at my right hand, and I glad at His.
I. If we turn our faces to God here His face will shine on us yonder. I have set the Lord always before my eyes. Before Thy face is fulness of joy. The one is the summing up of the devout mans life on earth. What can the other be but the prophecy of the devout mans life in heaven? Observe how for us, here and now, circumstanced and occupied and distracted as we are, that clear consciousness of Gods presence will inevitably fade and shatter unless we are careful to preserve it. I have set the Lord,--that implies a great deal of definite effort, of fixed will, of stem resistance to and rejection of hindrances and things that come between. Gods presence cannot be proved. The consciousness of it depends upon our whole nature. It is what people call a moral thing; and it rises and falls like a sensitive thermometer, if a cloud comes between the bulb and the sun. You can crowd Him out of your minds by plunging yourselves fiercely into your daily duties, however sacred and elevated these may be. No more than the sunshine can be flashed back from a tarnished steel mirror, can the consciousness of Gods presence live in an impure soul. And the heart must be kept still, flee from agitation, from the storms of passion and the tyranny of eager desires. A cats paw that ruffles the surface of the lake shatters the image; and unless our hearts are quieted from earth they will never mirror heaven. Walk thou before Me, and be perfect, is at once a commandment and a promise. And they only are wise who answer, I will walk before the Lord in the land, and the light of the living. As I have already said, this thrilling and continual consciousness of the Divine presence is the surest basis for the expectation of immortal life. It is too precious to die; it is too great and pure and noble to have anything to fear from the accident of corporal death. So we come to consider that higher form of the Divine presence which is suggested by the contrast in my second text. In Thy presence is fulness of joy. But that presence is not secured by the individuals efforts, but is poured upon him in its effulgence from the throne itself. If I try to keep God in sight here, yonder He reveals Himself in all His greatness. We are not to understand that that future vision which is all expressed in these words of my second text--before Thee--consists in any measure which is analogous to the sight of the body. Nor are we, I suppose, to understand that then, any more than now, we are able to comprehend the incomprehensible and infinite. The face of God is the Scriptural expression for that side of the Divine nature which is capable of being manifested by Him, and apprehended by us; and Jesus Christ is the face of God. Yonder it is that we shall see Him as He is; and yonder it is the Christ whom, having not seen we love, and whom seeing we shall see the Father. There will be, as I suppose, new and unimaginable modes of manifestation, about which the less that we say the wiser we are. For if our experience here on earth teaches us anything, it teaches us that the body shuts us off from as much as it brings us into contact with; and that our senses are but like little slits in some grim old fortress, only wide enough to let in the requisite light and air, and that beyond their limits in both directions there are notes of which the vibrations are too numerous, or too few, in a given time to be apprehended by our ears; and rays in the spectrum at either end, which the human eye cannot see. So that, with new modes of manifestation and new capacities of apprehension, we shall draw nearer and nearer to the sun that we beheld here shining through the mists and the clouds. If we, amidst the shows and gauds of time and the crowds of thronging men and the distractions of our daily occupations, steadfastly seek and see the Lord, and have beams coming from Him, as a light shining in a dark place, He will lift us yonder, and turn the whole benediction of the sunlight Of His face upon us, and, saturated with the brightness, we shall walk in the light of His countenance and be amongst the people of the blessed.
II. If we keep the Lord at our right hand He will set us at His right hand. The emblem of the right hand has a double meaning in Scripture, one part of which applies more to our present and the other to our future. When we speak of having at our right hand anyone, we mean as counsellor, companion, strengthener, ally; as fellow fighter, guide, and defender. And it is in that capacity that we have to set the Lord at our right hand. If we have Him by our sides we are never alone. I suppose that the saddest fate for a man is to live solitary. I suppose that we mortal millions live alone after all companionship; like islands in a waste of ocean, with no communications. Ah! How many of us have known what it is for the one that stood at our right hand to vanish, to change. If we live so companioned, counselled, championed, by a God made present, not by His omnipresence but by our consciousness of it, then be sure of this, that the time will come when He who came to earth, as it were, and stood at our right hand, will lift us to the heavens, and plant us at His. I at His right hand. What does that mean? Let me quote you two or three plain words. The sheep at His right hand; the goats at His left. It means that. It means favour, acceptance in that great day of account. And he called his name Benjamin:--the son of his right hand. It means that; paternal love, a yearning heart, a longing to pour all a Fathers blessing on the child. And it means that the man, thus acquired and taken to the Fathers heart, is distinguished and honoured--grant that these, my two sons, may sit, the one at Thy right hand, the other at Thy left. Nor must we forget that there is still a loftier conception attached to this emblem of the right hand, which was not within the horizon of the Psalmist, but is within ours. Jesus Christ our Brother has been exalted to that session at Gods right hand, which indicates in disturbance, completed work, royalty and power. And He, hath said, I go to prepare a place for you, that where I am there ye may be also. So if He is at my right hand, as champion, I shall be at His right hand and share in His dominion.
III. If we stay ourselves on God, amidst struggle and change here, He will gladden us yonder with perpetual joys. Because He is at my right hand I shall not be moved. A very humble result to be accomplished by so great a thing as the actual presence of God at a mans side. Only this, that I will be able to keep my place, and stand steadfast. And there is only one thing that will make us steadfast, and that is that we should be, if I might use such a figure, bolted and lashed on to, or rather incorporated into, the changeless steadfastness of the unmoved God. God comes to us here, and is sword and shield; yonder He will be palm and crown. In Thy presence is fulness of joy. Every faculty and capacity will be satisfied, every yearning met, and nothing left to desire but the continuance which is guaranteed, and the increase as capacity increases, which is as certain. Here there is always something lacking; yonder there is fulness of joy and no satiety. Pleasures for evermore--both because there is an uninterrupted succession of such--like the ripples upon a sunlit sea, that all day long come rolling to the beach and break in music and sparkles of light; and because each pleasure is in itself perpetual, seeing that there is no possibility of these delights becoming stale and common. Thus begin with realising the Divine presence. We must begin all this on earth. The seed of heaven is sown in the furrows of this world. Philosophers talk to us about the law of continuity. That applies in regard to the life here and the life hereafter. If you ever are to come into the blessedness of the life yonder, you must begin with the life of faith in Jesus Christ here and now. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
God as a dominant idea
Dissipation is the parent of mediocrity. Because there is neither government nor concentration nor dominant idea in mens lives, they never do much, never grow any size. The subject before us is self-government by means of a dominant idea. A dominant idea is an idea which mixes itself with all other ideas, giving them its own colour and character; so that you cannot take out any thought from a mind in which a dominant idea exists and analyse it, but you shall find traces of this one idea. Constantly we meet with men who have one thought by which they explain everything, and they infect us with a dominant feeling that they are very tiresome. Restraining, ruling ideas spring up naturally. The emotions are the first parents of ideas. Primitive man hears a voice rebuking mere animal desire, which says, Thou shalt not cat of it, and the moment that voice is heard a moral nature has arisen and heaven becomes possible. The great majority of men allow their lives, as they do their beliefs, to go anyhow. They have never formed a distinct opinion as to the shape their life is to take. It is in our power to choose what idea we shall be ruled by, and, having chosen, it is in our power to make the idea a ruling one. We must determine to associate our idea with all our pleasures and labours; to bring it before our mind every day. And what shall be our dominant idea? The idea of God is our birthright. The idea of God stands upon exactly the same ground as all our other intuitions. Clifford says, Belief in God and in a future life is a source of refined and elevated pleasure to those who can hold it. Here is the idea ready to our hand. The idea is your birthright, but you have to make it dominant. (W. Page Roberts, M. A.)
The practice of the presence of God
God always sees us, whether we think of it or not. It makes no difference as to the fact whether we believe it or not. But it makes all the difference to ourselves. It makes just the difference between a godly man and an ungodly man. The truly religious man is he who has formed the habit of living under the influence of the thought of the presence of God. To set the Lord always before us is the secret of good living, is the true preparation for heaven. This is one reason why regular habits of prayer, of worship, of reading Gods Word, of Holy Communion are so helpful and cannot safely be neglected. They are means of drawing near to God, of coming into His presence. If we are doing anything, whether work or amusement, in which we could not bear to think of God, we may be sure that work or amusement is wrong. There is a beautiful custom in some countries. Sacred pictures are placed at intervals by the wayside, among the mountains and woods, in the streets of villages and towns. They are roughly made, badly painted and tinselly, but for all that they are reminders to people of holy thoughts; they are meant to call the mind of the passers-by in the midst of work or amusement to God. And how are we to set Him before us? How are we to think of Him? We may set Him before us in the completeness of His Divine Being--God the Father, the Son, the Spirit. Try to form the habit of setting the Lord always before you; for if He is at your right hand you shall never fall. Always in earnest prayer at the beginning of every day. Always when things go well with you, and in trouble, turning to Him as the one trusted help and refuge. (J. E. Vernon, M. A.)
The setting of the Lord before us
This and the following verses are quoted by Peter in his sermon on the Day of Pentecost.
1. Those who set the Lord always before them have an habitual impression of His all-seeing eye and immediate presence. David, we know, had this habitual impression. He was aware how highly important to him was this near presence of the Almighty, and what a beneficial, influence it shed over all his prospects.
2. It implies an habitual regard to the Lords will as the rule of our actions. Faithful Christians must make it their constant study to ascertain what is the will of God respecting themselves, and then set this will before them as the rule of their life. It should not only be a consideration with them, but their chief consideration. Those who make the will of God their rule cannot err. They look at it as sailors to the pole star, in order that they may direct their course thereby.
3. It implies making the Lords glory the end of all our aims. The glory of the Lord is that one object of surpassing importance which absorbs all other considerations. To set the Lord always before us is to keep this end always in view.
4. It implies making Him the object of our trust and dependence in all circumstances.
1. The practice of setting the Lord always before us is a bright evidence of the sincerity of our faith. Faith is a living and abiding principle, constantly in operation. Faith is that principle within the man which realises and embodies everything which is spiritual.
2. A constant sense of the presence of God is a sure means of counteracting the influence of the fear of man, which bringeth a snare.
3. A sense of the Lords constant presence would be a spur to our diligence and activity in endeavouring to work out our own salvation with fear and trembling. A persuasion that the eye of the Lord is in every place, beholding the evil and the good, would have a wonderful effect in exciting the runners of the Christian race to put forth their utmost powers to strain every nerve, that they may come in first to the goal. Now see a few lights in which you should make it your habit to set the Lord always before you--
(1)You are directed to set before yourselves the Lord as your chief good, the highest object of your aims.
(2) We are to look upon God, in Christ, as our owner. God possesses a right over us as our Maker and Preserver.
(3) We are to set the Lord Jesus before us as a Judge. We should not merely give a general assent to the truth of the judgment which will hereafter take place, and that Christ will occupy the throne then, but we are to consider Him as seated now upon the tribunal, and taking cognisance of all our transactions. (T. Chambers, M. A.)
Things that intercept the Divine presence
There are three things that, taken together, build up for us a very thick triple wall between us and God. There is sense, and all that it reveals to us; there are duties, necessary, possibly blessed, but actually often disturbing and limiting; and the thickest and most opaque of the three screens, there are the sins which dim our capacity, and check our inclination of realising the Divine presence. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
Thought must concentrate itself upon God
That needs that we shall shut out a great deal besides, as a man that wants to see something on the horizon will hold his palm above his eyes to exclude nearer objects and the glare that dazzles. It needs that we shall resolutely concentrate our thoughts upon Him. We have to be ignorant of a great deal if we would know any of the sciences, or of the practical arts. And we have to shear off not less if we would know the best knowledge, and be experts in the highest art in life. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
God near and yet afar
There may as well be no God, as far as a great many of us are concerned, in the most important matters of our lives, as a God that we never think about. He is not far from every one of us; but we may be very far from Him, and we are very far from Him unless by effort we set Him before us. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
The stability of the good man
The presumptuous man in one of the Psalms speaks thus: In my prosperity I said, I shall not be moved. But when prosperity fled self-confidence fled with it, and at length he learned to say, as he goes on to tell us, by Thy favour Thou hast made my mountain to stand strong. Thou didst hide Thy face, and I was troubled. Ah! think of the instability of our resolutions, think of the fluctuations of our thoughts, think of the surges of our emotions, think of the changes that by subtle degrees pass over us all, so as that the old mans grey hair and bowed form is less unlike his childish buoyancy and clustering ringlets than are his senile thoughts and memories to his juvenile expectations. And think of the forces that are brought to bear upon us, the shucks of calamity and sorrow by which we are beaten and battered, the blasts of temptation by which we are sometimes all but overthrown, the floods that come and beat upon our house. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
Steadfastness
That steadfastness will come to us by the actual communication of strength, and it will come to us because in the consciousness of the Divine presence there lies a charm that takes the glamour out of temptation and the pain out of all wounds. He being with us, the dazzling, treacherous brilliancies of earth cease to dazzle and betray. He being with us, sorrow itself and pain and all the ills that flesh is heir to have little power to shake the soul. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
Pleasure for evermore
That presence which amidst strife, warfare, weakness, and mutability manifested itself in its gift of steadfastness will then, amidst the tranquillity of heaven, manifest itself in a joy unlike all earthly joy, in that it is full; and yet more unlike, if I may say so, all earthly joy in that it is perpetual. Here there is ever something lacking in all our gladness, some guest at the table that sulks and will not partake and rejoice, some unlit window in the illumination, some limitation in the gladness; yonder it shall be full. I shall be satisfied when I awake in Thy likeness. Here, thank God! we have brooks by the way; there we shall stoop down and drink from the fountain, the ocean of joy. And the gladness is perpetual, in that, having nothing to do with physical causes or externals, there is no cause of change and no certainty of reaction. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
The habitual recognition of God
If we observe the pursuits of men of the world we see how they set their object, be it what it may, always before them. Success cannot be had without this. The same necessity exists in religion. If we would desire any real help now, and promised blessings hereafter, God must be to us ever present. Such piety is attended with Gods constant protection and friendship.
I. What it is to set the Lord always before us. It is to maintain a supreme and habitual regard for God, according to the relations which He sustains towards us. In the world, if a man has fixed his supreme regard on wealth, though he may often think and talk on other subjects, yet he never forgets this one. Let anything occur that will affect it, and you will always find that his object is before him. Now, it is in the same way that we set the Lord always before us. We shall always regard Him as infinitely perfect--as our Lawgiver and Sovereign; as our Creator, Preserver, and Benefactor; as our Redeemer and Sanctifier; as a covenant God; as our Judge and Rewarder. Now, so to habitually regard God as to secure the practical influence of all these perfections and relations of God upon us is to set the Lord always before us.
II. The advantage of so doing.
1. In the daily business of our life--to keep us diligent, just in our dealings, and honest in all our transactions.
2. In the more unimportant and ordinary occurrences of life--to keep us faithful in lifes little things, contented, cheerful, patient, devout.
3. In temptation we shall not be moved. It guards the heart against the world and Satan.
4. In holy obedience we shall be steadfast therein.
5. Preparation for all the scenes of life, for death and heaven. In prosperity he will remember God; in adversity he will trust God; in death he will be without fear; in the judgment day he will have confidence. And we can thus set God always before us. Is it safe or wise ever to forget Him? Do we thus set God always before us? What will they do from whose thoughts God is habitually excluded, when He shall be revealed in the clear light of eternity? (M. W. Taylor, D. D.)
Our great Example
The terms of this portion of the Psalm show distinctly that it is prophetic of the Messiah.
I. The first prediction is that Christ, when He should come, would set Jehovah continually before Him, i.e. He would live on earth realising by faith the presence of an unseen God, to dwell continually in His sight. Our Lord did this. He said, My meat is to do the will of Him that sent Me.
II. Jehovah would be at His right hand. We find our Lord continually sustaining Himself by the consoling presence of His Father. And all who tread in His steps may share in His consolation.
III. His heart would be glad. How could He be otherwise, when He knew the resources of the Father? Our Lord walked with God on earth, rejoicing in hope of the glory that should be revealed. So also may we, and do we?
IV. His flesh should rest in hope. This implies--
1. His death. His death was predicted no less than His triumph. He looked forward to His death, and repeatedly foretold it. And He resolutely met it. Let us ask for grace to enter into His spirit.
2. The limitation of deaths dominion. I have power, said He, to lay it (My life) down, and I have power to take it again. I lay it down of Myself. He did as He had said. He took again that dishonoured body, to be dishonoured no more.
V. God would guide him to the path of life. Thou wilt show Me, etc. The way of the grave did not seem the gate of life, but in reality it was so. Conclusion: He will bring us there. Decide for Him now. Sympathise with Him in His glory. (Baptist W. Noel.)
The habitual thought of God
David could only do this mentally. No man hath seen God at any time. And when he says always he does not mean that he was always actually thinking of Him. We cannot do this. We are not to be slothful in business. Yet David means that he believed and felt God to be near him, and that he would frequently hold communion with God. This leads to a state of mind in which we can readily recur to God in our thoughts. Let us do this, setting the Lord always before us.
I. As our protector. Our religious course is a constant warfare. We need the courage which only the presence of the Lord can impart.
II. As our leader.
III. As our example.
IV. As cult observer. Nothing escapes His notice. A heathen philosopher admonished his disciples to imagine that the eye of some illustrious personage was always upon them. But what is the eye of Plato to that of God? What stimulus this to zeal. (William Jay.)
On habitual remembrance of God
Our text directs our thoughts to the greatest of all Beings, the source of all happiness.
I. What it is to set God always before us. Represent to yourself the proceedings of men, who have proposed to themselves as their main pursuit the possession of some worldly attainment. Observe in what manner they set their object, be it what it may, always before their eyes. Contemplate the votary of science. Behold him absorbed in laborious researches: in the investigation of causes and effects; in the construction of theories, and the explanation of the phenomena of nature. Behold him day after day bending all the powers of his mind to the invention and application of mechanism; to the arrangement and superintendence of experiments; to the development and illustration of philosophical truth. At home and abroad, in cities and in the fields, in solitude and in society, behold him steadily bearing in mind the object to which he has dedicated his life. Survey the votary of ambition. Behold every nerve, every faculty, upon the stretch to supplant, to undermine, or to surpass his rivals, and to attain the dizzy preeminence to which he aspires. Receive then a lesson from the children of this world (Luk_16:8). Then wilt thou discern what it is to set the Lord thy God always before thee.
II. The different characters under which it is our duty to do this.
1. Regard Him as Creator. If you deem life a blessing, remember Him--
2. As your Preserver.
3. As your Redeemer and Sanctifier.
4. As your Sovereign and your Judge. See then that you obey Him, lest you be destroyed forever.
III. Give examples of the duty of thus setting the Lord always before you.
1. In prosperity--by being grateful to Him.
2. In adversity, sickness, and death--by trusting Him, submitting to Him patiently, remembering how little your sufferings in comparison with your sins. Look up to Him and be comforted.
3. In youth--by not withholding from the planter the prime of the fruit. When wilt thou serve thy God if not now?
4. In age--by remembering that the night cometh; work, while it is called today; seek mercy while yet it may be found.
5. Under all circumstances, in common duties, as well as in specially religious acts. If you are cultivating your farm; if you are selling your articles in the market or in a shop; if you are serving a master in your daily labour; if you are managing the concerns of your friend or of your country: remember that God is contemplating all your motive, all your thoughts, all your words, all your actions; and that for all your motives and thoughts and words and actions you will have to render an account at the judgment seat of Christ (Rev_20:12).
IV. The recompense. The Lord is at their right hand; they shall not be moved (1Sa_2:30; Joh_14:23). (T. Gisborne, M. A.)
The secret of a happy life
In the preceding verses we read, The lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places, yea, I have, etc. The speaker, therefore, is a very contented and happy man. How is it that he is able to feel so happy? Let us seek out the way. Perhaps his road may fit our feet. But who is the person who is thus singularly content? It is the Lord Jesus Christ. It is He who by the Spirit here speaks. All this is so much the more encouraging to us because if He, the Man of Sorrows, was nevertheless able to possess so sweet content, it must be possible for us, whose lot is not so bitter. We are not sent to make atonement for sin, and hence our sorrows are few compared with our Lords. Our text clearly imparts to us the secret of this peace, It is--
I. Living in the Lords presence always. I have set . . . always before me. Now, this means--
1. That we should make the Lords presence the greatest of all facts to us. Jesus did so. He saw God everywhere. From morning to evening, until you fall asleep as in the embraces of your God, see Him everywhere. This is happy living.
2. The making of Gods glory the one object of our lives.
3. So to live that the presence of God shall be the rule and support of our obedience. So Jesus did. The Masters eye is to many servants most important, to make them careful and diligent. For many are eye servers and men pleasers. But how should we live if God were seen looking on? He is looking on.
4. As the source from which we are to derive solace and comfort under every trial. This it was that made Him suffer and never complain.
5. That we are to hold perpetual communion with God. He was always in converse with the Father, and He could say, I knew that Thou hearest Me always.
6. We must follow this life, because of our delight and joy in it. Such a life cannot be lived in any other manner. If you find walking with God dull, then you have not the first essentials of such a life. You must be born again. If you are the Lords you will delight in living near to Him. You may lose your roll, like Christian in the arbour, and you may go back again and find it, lint it is very hard going back over the same ground. The hardest part of the road to heaven is that which has to be traversed three times: once when you go over it at first, a second time when you have to return with weeping to find your lost evidences, and then again when you have to make up for lost time. Abiding with God creates peace like a river.
II. Trusting always in the Lords presence, Because He is at my right hand I shall not be moved.
1. With any regret or remorse as to the past. Christ had many sorrows but no regrets.
2. From our consistency in the way of true religion.
3. With terror.
4. By temptation, so as to be swept into surprising sin.
5. So as to fail at last. Conclusion:
1. You who are not Christians, you are not happy. Set the Lord before you.
2. You who are not Christians, but think yourselves happy. How flail the pillar on which your happiness rests.
3. You Christians who are not happy; here is counsel for you.
4. You happy Christians, you can be happier still by coming nearer to God, This is heaven below. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Because He is at my right hand, I shall not be moved.
The faithful heart and the present God
This Psalm touches the high-water mark of the religious life in two aspects--its ardent devotion, and its clear certainty of eternal blessedness beyond the grave. These two are connected as cause and effect.
I. The effort of faith. I have set the Lord always before me. It took a dead lift of conscious effort for the Psalmist to keep himself continually in touch with that unseen God. This is the very essence of true religion. Mark how the Psalmist came to this effort. It was because his whole soul clave to God, with the intelligent and reasonable conviction and apprehension that in God alone was all he needed. If a man does not think about God and His love it is all one as if he had not Him and it.
II. The ally of faith. The second portion of the text is to be interpreted as the consequence of the effort. He is at my right hand. The Psalmist means that by the turning of his thoughts to God and the effort he makes--the effort of faith, imagination, love, and desire--to bring himself as close as he can to the great heart of the Father, he realises that presence at his side in an altogether different manner from that in which it is given to stones and rocks and birds and beasts and godless men. That Divine Presence is the source of all strength and blessedness. At my right hand; then I stand at His left, and close under the arm that carries the shield; and close by my instrument of activity, to direct my work; my Protector, my Ally, my Director.
III. The courageous stability of faith. Not be moved. That is true all round, in regard of all the things which may move and shake a man. The secret of a quiet heart is to keep ever near God. We shall not be moved by circumstances. How quietly we may live above the storms if we only live in God. The Psalmist feels that the great change from life to death will not move him, in so far as his union with God is concerned. A realisation of true communion with God is the guarantee that the man who has it shall never die. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Alexander MacLaren1905 · Public DomainOn vv8, 11
Psalms
ONE SAYING FROM THREE MEN
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GOD WITH US, AND WE WITH GOD
Psa 16:8, Psa 16:11.
There are, unquestionably, large tracts of the Old Testament in which the anticipation of immortality does not appear, and there are others in which its presence may be doubtful. But here there can be no hesitation, I think, as to the meaning of these words. If we regard them carefully, we shall not only see clearly the Psalmist’s hope of immortal life, but shall discern the process by which he came to it, and almost his very act of grasping at it; for the first verse of our text is manifestly the foundation of the second; and the facts of the one are the basis of the hopes of the other. That is made plain by the ‘therefore’ which, in one of the intervening verses, links the concluding rapturous anticipations with the previous expressions.
If, then, we observe that here, in these two verses which I have read, there is a very remarkable parallelism, we shall get still more strikingly the connection between the devout life here and the perfecting of the same hereafter. Note how, even in our translation, the latter verse is largely an echo of the former, and how much more distinctly that is the case if we make a little variation in the rendering, which brings it closer to the original. ‘I have set the Lord always before me,’ says the one,-that is the present. ‘In Thy presence is fulness of joy,’ says the other,-that is the consequent future. And the two words, which are rendered in the one case ‘before me’ and in the other case ‘in Thy presence,’ are, though not identical, so precisely synonymous that we may take them as meaning the same thing. So we might render ‘I have set the Lord always before my face’: ‘Before Thy face is fulness of joy.’ The other clause is, to an English reader, more obviously parallel: ‘Because He is at my right hand I shall not be moved’-shall be steadied here. ‘At Thy right hand are pleasures for evermore’-the steadfastness here merges into eternal delights hereafter.
So then, we have two conditions set before us, and the link between them made very plain. And I gather all that I have to say about these words into two statements. First, life here may be God’s presence with us, to make us steadfast. And secondly, if so, life hereafter will be our presence with God to make us glad. That is the Psalmist’s teaching, and I will try to enforce it.
I. First, then, life here may be God’s presence with us, to make us steadfast.
Mark the Psalmist’s language. ‘I have set the Lord always in front of me-before my face.’ Emphasis is placed on ‘set’ and ‘always.’ God is ever by our sides, but we may be very far away from Him, ‘though He be not far off from every one of us,’ and if we are to have Him blazing, clear and unobscured above and beyond all the mists and hubbub of earth, we shall need continual effort in order to keep Him in our sight. ‘I have set the Lord’-He permits me to put out my hand, as it were, and station Him where I want Him, that I may always have Him in my sight, and be able to look at Him and be calm and blessed.
You cannot do that, if you let the world, and wealth, and business, and anxieties, and ambitions, and cares, and sorrows, and duties, and family responsibilities, jostle and hustle Him out of your minds and hearts. You cannot do it if, like John Bunyan’s man with the muckrake, you keep your eyes always down on the straw at your feet, and never lift them to the crown above. How many men in Manchester walk its streets from year’s end to year’s end, and never look up to the sky except to see whether they must take their umbrellas with them or not? And so all the magnificence and beauty of the daily heavens, and the nightly gemming of the empty places with perpetually burning stars, are lost to them! So, God is blazing there in front of us, but unless we set ourselves to it, we shall never see Him. You have to look, by a conscious effort, over and away from the things that are ‘seen and temporal’ if you want to see the things that are ‘unseen and eternal.’
But if you disturb the whole tenor of your being by agitations and distractions and petty cares, or if you defile it by sensual and fleshly lusts, and animal propensities gratified, and poor, miserable, worldly ambitions and longings filling up your souls, then God can no more be visible before your face than the blessed sun can mirror himself in a storm-tossed sea or in a muddy puddle. The heart must be pure, and the heart must be still, and the mind must be detached from earth, and glued to Heaven, and the glasses of the telescope must be sedulously cleansed from dust, if we are to be blessed with the vision of God continuously before our face.
Then note, still further, that if thus we have made God present with us, by realising the fact of His presence, when He comes, He comes with His hands full. ‘I have set the Lord always before me,’ says the Psalmist. And then he goes on to say, ‘Because He is at my right hand.’ Not only in front of you, then, David, to be looked at, but at your side! What for? What do we summon some one to come and stand beside us for? In order that from his presence there may come help and succour and courage and confidence. And so God comes to the right hand of the man who honestly endeavours through all the confusions and bustles of life to realise His sweet and calming presence. Where He comes He comes to help; not to be a spectator, but an ally in the warfare; and whoever sets the Lord before him will have the Lord at his right hand.
And then, note, still further, the steadfastness which God brings. I have spoken of the effort which brings God. I speak now of the steadfastness which He brings by His coming. The Psalmist’s anticipation is a singularly modest one. ‘Because He is at my right hand I shall’-What? Be triumphant? No! Escape sorrows? No! Have my life filled with serenity? No! ‘I shall not be moved.’ That is the best I can hope for. To be able to stand on the spot, with steadfast convictions, with steadfast purposes, with steadfast actions-continuously in one direction; ‘having overcome all, to stand’-that is as much as the best of us can desire or expect, in this poor struggling life of ours.
What a profound consciousness of inward weakness and of outward antagonism there breathes in that humble and modest hope, as being the loftiest result of the presence of Omnipotence for our aid: ‘I shall not be moved’! When we think of our inner weakness, when we remember the fluctuations of our feelings and emotions, when we compare the ups and downs of our daily life, or when we think of the larger changes covering years, which affect all our outlooks, our thoughts, our plans; and how
‘We all are changed by still degrees,
All but the basis of the soul,’
it is much to say, ‘I shall not be moved.’ And when we think of the obstacles that surround us, of the storms that dash against us, how we are swept by surges of emotion that wash away everything before their imperious onrush, or swayed by blasts of temptation that break down the strongest defences, or smitten by the shocks of change and sorrow that crush the firmest hearts, it is much to say, in the face of a world pressing upon us with the force of the wind in a cyclone, that our poor, feeble reed shall stand upright and ‘not be moved’ in the fiercest blast. ‘What went ye out for to see?’ ‘A reed shaken with the wind’-that is humanity. ‘Behold! I have made thee an iron pillar and brazen walls, and they shall fight against thee, but they shall not prevail’-that is weak man, stiffened into uprightness, and rooted in steadfastness by the touch of the hand of a present God.
And, brother! there is nothing else that will stay a man’s soul. The holdfast cannot be a part of the chain. It must be fastened to a fixed point. The anchor that is to keep the ship of your life from dragging and finding itself, when the morning breaks, a ghastly wreck upon the reef, must be outside of yourself, and the cable of it must be wrapped round the throne of God. The anchor of the soul, sure and steadfast, which will neither break nor drag, can only be firm when it ‘enters into that within the veil.’ God, and God only, can thus make us strong! So, dear friends, let us see to it that we fasten our aims and purposes, our faith and love, our submission and obedience, upon that mighty Helper who will be with us and make us strong, that we may ‘stand fast in the Lord and in the power of His might.’
II. Now, secondly, notice how, if so, life hereafter will be our presence with God, to make us glad.
I have already pointed out briefly the connection between these two portions of my text, and I need only remark here that the link which holds them together is very obvious. If a man loves God, and trusts Him, and ‘walks with Him,’ after the fashion described in our former verse, then there will spring up, irrepressible and unconquerable, a conviction in that man’s soul that this sweet and strong communion, which makes so much of the blessedness of life, must last after death. Anything is conceivable rather than that a man who walks with God shall cease to be! Rather, when he ‘is not’ any more ‘found’ among men, it is only because ‘God took him.’ Thus the emotions and experiences of a truly devout soul are {apart from the great revelation in Jesus Christ which hath brought ‘life and immortality to light’} the best evidence and confirmation of the anticipation of immortal life. It cannot be, unless our whole intellectual faculties are to be put into utter confusion, that such an experience as that of the man who loves God, and tries to trust Him, and walk before Him, is destined to be brought to nothingness with the mere dissolution of this earthly frame. The greatness and the smallness, the achievements and the failures, of the religious life as we see it here, all bear upon their front the mark of imperfection, and in their imperfection prophesy and proclaim a future completion. Because it is so great in itself, and because, being so great, its developments and influence are so strangely and sadly checked, the faith that knits a man to Christ demands eternity for its duration, and infinitude for its perfection. Thus, he that says ‘I have set the Lord always before me,’ goes on to say, with an undeniable accuracy of inference, ‘Therefore Thou wilt not leave my soul in the under world.’ God is not going to forget the soul that clave to Him, and anything is believable sooner than that.
Our texts not only assert this connection and base the confidence of immortality on the present experiences of the spirit that trusts in God, but also give the outline, at least, of the correspondences between the imperfections of the present and the perfectnesses of the future. And I cast this into two or three words before I close.
This is the first of them. If you will turn your faces to God, amidst all the flaunting splendours and vain shows and fleeting possessions of this present, His face will dawn on you yonder. We can say but little of what is meant by such a hope as that. But only this we can say, that there will be, as yet unimaginable, new wealths of revelation of the Father, and to match them, as yet unimaginable new inlets of apprehension and perception upon our parts, so that the sweetest, clearest, closest, most satisfying vision of God that has ever dawned on sad souls here, shall be but ‘as in a glass darkly’ compared with that face to face sight. We live away out on the far-off outskirts of the system where those great planets plough along their slow orbits, and turn their languid rotations at distances that imagination faints in contemplating, and the light and the heat and the life that reach them are infinitesimally small. We shall be shifted into the orb that is nearest the sun; and oh! what a rapture of light and life and heat will come to our amazed spirits: ‘I have set the Lord always before me.’ Twilight though the light has been, I have tried to keep it. I shall be of the sons of light close to the Throne and shall see Thy face. I shall be satisfied when I wake out of this sleep of life into Thy likeness.
Then, again, if you will keep God at your right hand here, He will set you on His hereafter. Keep Him here for your Companion, for your Ally, for your Advocate, to breathe strength into you by the touch of His hand, as some feeble man, leaning upon a stronger arm, may be upheld. If you will do that, then the place where the favoured servants stand will be yours; the place where trusted counsellors stand will be yours; the place where the sheep stand will be yours; the place where the Shepherd sits will be yours; for He to whom it is said, ‘Sit Thou at My right hand till I make Thine enemies Thy footstool,’ says to us, ‘Where I am there shall also My servant be.’ Keep God by your sides, and you will be lifted to Christ’s place at the right hand of the Majesty on high.
Lastly, if we let ourselves be stayed by God amidst the struggle and difficulty, we shall be gladdened by Him with perpetual joys. The emphasis of the last words of my text is rather on the adjectives than on the nouns-full joy, eternal pleasure. And how both characteristics contradict the experiences of earth, even the gladdest, which we fain would make permanent! For I suppose that no earthly joy is either central, reaching the deepest self, or circumferential, embracing the whole being of a man, but that only God can so go into the depths of my soul as that from His throne there He can flood the whole of my nature with felicity and peace. In all other gladnesses there is always in the landscape one bit of sullen shadow somewhere or other, unparticipant of the light, while all around is blazing. And we need that He should come to make us blessed.
Joys here are no more lasting than they are complete. As one who only too sadly proved the truth of his own words, burning out his life before he was six-and-thirty, has said-
‘Pleasures are like poppies spread,
You seize the flower, its bloom is shed!
Or like the snowflake in the river.
A moment white-then gone for ever.’
Oh! my friend, ‘why do ye spend your money for that which is not bread?’ The life of faith on earth is the beginning, and only the beginning, of that life of calm and complete felicity in the heavenly places.
I have shown you the ladder’s foot, ‘I have set the Lord always before me.’ The top round reaches the throne of God, and whoever begins at the bottom, and holds fast the beginning of his confidence firm unto the end, for him the great promise of the Master will come true, and Christ’s ‘joy will remain in him and his joy shall be full.’
Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
C. I. Scofield1917 · Public DomainOn vv9–10thy flesh
thy flesh
The 16th Psalm is a prediction of the resurrection of the King. As a prophet David understood that, not at His first advent, but at some time subsequent to His death and resurrection Messiah would assume the Davidic throne. See Act 2:25-31; Luk 1:32; Luk 1:33; Act 15:13-17. See "Davidic Covenant," (See Scofield "2Sa 7:14"); "Kingdom (O.T.)," See Scofield "Zec 12:8".
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See Psalms 22, next in order of the Messianic Psalms.
The Scofield Reference Bible (1917 edition), notes by C. I. Scofield — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0On vv9, 11General Information:
General Information:
David continues to speak to God.
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my heart is glad
Here the "heart" represents the speaker's thoughts and emotions. AT: "Therefore I am glad" (See: Metonymy)
my glory is rejoicing
Possible meanings are 1) the word "glory" represents the honor a person feels. AT: "I am honored to rejoice in God" or 2) the word translated "glory" really means "liver" and represents the speaker's emotions. AT: "I am rejoicing"
Tyndale Open Study Notes2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0On vv9–1116:9-11 Knowing that not even death can separate him…
16:9-11 Knowing that not even death can separate him from the Lord strengthens the psalmist’s confidence. He fears a separation (see 13:3-4), but he remains confident of seeing the Lord (see 11:7).
GEBible — Godless Engineer's Bible App
John Calvin 1540 · Public Domain On vv8–11 8. I have set Jehovah, etc. The Psalmist again…
8. I have set Jehovah, etc. The Psalmist again shows the firmness and stability of his faith. To set God before us is nothing else than to keep all our senses bound and captive, that they may not run out and go astray after any other object. We must look to him with other eyes than those of the flesh, for we shall seldom be able to perceive him unless we elevate our minds above the world; and faith prevents us from turning our back upon him. The meaning, therefore, is, that David kept his mind so intently fixed upon the providence of God, as to be fully persuaded, that whenever any difficulty or distress should befall him, God would be always at hand to assist him. He adds, also, continually, to show us how he constantly depended upon the assistance of God, so that, amidst the various conflicts with which he was agitated, no fear of danger could make him turn his eyes to any other quarter than to God in search of succor. And thus we ought so to depend upon God as to continue to be fully persuaded of his being near to us, even when he seems to be removed to the greatest distance from us. When we shall have thus turned our eyes towards him, the masks and the vain illusions of this world will no longer deceive us.
Because he is at my right hand. I read this second clause as a distinct sentence from the preceding. To connect them together as some do in this way, I have set the Lord continually before me, because he is at my right hand, would give a meagre meaning to the words, and take away much of the truth which is taught in them, as it would make David to say, that he measured God’s presence according to the experience he had of it; a mode of speaking which would not be at all becoming. I consider, therefore, the words, I have set the Lord continually before me, as a complete sentence, and David set the Lord before him for the purpose of constantly repairing to him in all his dangers. For his greater encouragement to hope well, he sets before himself what it is to have God’s assistance and fatherly care, namely, that it implies his keeping firm and unmoved his own people with whom he is present. David then reckons himself secure against all dangers, and promises himself certain safety, because, with the eyes of faith, he beholds God as present with him. From this passage we are furnished with an argument which overthrows the fabrication of the Sorbonists, The Doctors of the Sorbonne, a university in Paris.
John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain On vv8–11 The faithful are sure to persevere to the end.
The faithful are sure to persevere to the end.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv8–11 Psa 16:8 I have set the LORD always before…
Psa 16:8 I have set the LORD always before me: because [he is] at my right hand, I shall not be moved.
Ver. 8. I have set the Lord always before me] Heb. I have equally set, or proposed. The apostle translateth it, "I foresee the Lord always before my face," Act 2:25. I set the eye of my faith full upon him, and suffer it not to take to other things; I look him in the face, oculo irretorto, as the eagle looketh upon the sun; and oculo adamantino, with an eye of adamant, which turns only to one point; so here, I have equally set the Lord before me, without irregular affections and passions. And this was one of those lessons that his reins had taught him, that the Holy Spirit had dictated unto him.
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Because he is as my right hand] To help me that I fall not, saith R. David, or as a thing that I cannot but remember, as being of continual use to me. It is as necessary to remember God, as to draw breath, saith Chrysostom.
I shall not be moved] i.e. Not greatly moved, as Psa 62:2. Though Satan stand at the right hand of a godly man, to resist and annoy him, Zec 3:1, yet so long as God is at his right hand, to assist and comfort him, and he at God’s right hand, Psa 45:9 (which is a place of honour and safety), he cannot be moved. The gates of hell shall never prevail; Christ, our Samson, hath flung them off their hinges.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain On vv8–11 i.e. I have always presented him to my mind…
i.e. I have always presented him to my mind as my rule and scope, as my witness and judge, as my patron and protector, in the discharge of my office, and in all my actions. Hitherto David seems to have spoken in his own person, and with special respect to himself; but now he seems to have been transported by a higher, inspiration of the Spirit of prophecy, and to be carried above himself, and to have an eye to the man Christ Jesus, who is and was the end of the law, and the great scope of all the prophets, and to speak of himself only as a type of Christ, and with more special respect unto Christ, in whom this and the following verses were much more truly and fully accomplished than in himself. Christ as man did always set his Father’s will and glory before him, as he himself oft declareth, especially in St. John’s Gospel.
He is at my right hand, to wit, to strengthen me, (for the right hand is the chief seat of a man’s strength, and, instrument of action,) to protect, assist, and comfort me, as this phrase signifies, Psa 119:31; 90:5. And this assistance of God was necessary to Christ as man.
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I shall not be moved, or, removed, either from the discharge of my duty, or from the attainment of that glory and happiness which is prepared for me. Though the archers shoot grievously at me, and both men and devils seek my destruction, and God sets himself against me as an enemy, withdrawing his favour from me, and filling me with deadly sorrows, through the sense of his anger; yet I do not despair, but am assured that God will deliver me out of all my distresses.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Matthew Henry 1710 · Public Domain On v8 All these verses are quoted by St. Peter in…
All these verses are quoted by St. Peter in his first sermon, after the pouring out of the Spirit on the day of pentecost (Act 2:25-28); and he tells us expressly that David in them speaks concerning Christ and particularly of his resurrection. Something we may allow here of the workings of David's own pious and devout affections towards God, depending upon his grace to perfect every thing that concerned him, and looking for the blessed hope, and happy state on the other side death, in the enjoyment of God; but in these holy elevations towards God and heaven he was carried by the spirit of prophecy quite beyond the consideration of himself and his own case, to foretel the glory of the Messiah, in such expressions as were peculiar to that, and could not be understood of himself. The New Testament furnishes us with a key to let us into the mystery of these lines.
I. These verses must certainly be applied to Christ; of him speaks the prophet this, as did many of the Old Testament prophets, who testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ and the glory that should follow (Pe1 1:11), and that is the subject of this prophecy here. It is foretold (as he himself showed concerning this, no doubt, among other prophecies in this psalm, Luk 24:44, Luk 24:46) that Christ should suffer, and rise from the dead, Co1 15:3, Co1 15:4.
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1. That he should suffer and die. This is implied here when he says (Psa 16:8), I shall not be moved; he supposed that he should be struck at, and have a dreadful shock given him, as he had in his agony, when his soul was exceedingly sorrowful, and he prayed that the cup might pass from him. When he says, "My flesh shall rest," it is implied that he must put off the body, and therefore must go through the pains of death. It is likewise plainly intimated that his soul must go into a state of separation from the body, and that his body, so deserted, would be in imminent danger of seeing corruption - that he should not only die, but be buried, and abide for some time under the power of death.
2. That he should be wonderfully borne up by the divine power in suffering and dying. (1.) That he should not be moved, should not be driven off from his undertaking nor sink under the weight of it, that he should not fail nor be discouraged (Isa 42:4), but should proceed and persevere in it, till he could say, It is finished. Though the service was hard and the encounter hot, and he trod the winepress alone, yet he was not moved, did not give up the cause, but set his face as a flint, Isa 50:7-9. Here am I, let these go their way. Nay, (2.) That his heart should rejoice and his glory be glad, that he should go on with his undertaking, not only resolutely, but cheerfully, and with unspeakable pleasure and satisfaction, witness that saying (Joh 17:11), Now I am no more in the world, but I come to thee, and that (Joh 18:11), The cup that my Father has given me, shall I not drink it? and many the like. By his glory is meant his tongue, as appears, Act 2:26. For our tongue is our glory, and never more so than when it is employed in glorifying God. Now there were three things which bore him up and carried him on thus cheerfully: - [1.] The respect he had to his Father's will and glory in what he did: I have set the Lord always before me. He still had an eye to his Father's commandment (Joh 10:18, Joh 14:31), the will of him that sent him. He aimed at his Father's honour and the restoring of the interests of his kingdom among men, and this kept him from being moved by the difficulties he met with; for he always did those things that pleased his Father. [2.] The assurance he had of his Father's presence with him in his sufferings: He is at my right hand, a present help to me, nigh at hand in the time of need. He is near that justifieth me (Isa 50:8); he is at my right hand, to direct and strengthen it, and hold it up, Psa 89:21. When he was in his agony an angel was sent from heaven to strengthen him, Luk 22:43. To this the victories and triumphs of the cross were all owing; it was the Lord at his right hand that struck through kings, Psa 110:5; Isa 42:1, Isa 42:2. [3.] The prospect he had of a glorious issue of his sufferings. It was for the joy set before him that he endured the cross, Heb 12:2. He rested in hope, and that made his rest glorious, Isa 11:10. He knew he should be justified in the Spirit by his resurrection, and straightway glorified. See Joh 13:31, Joh 13:32.
3. That he should be brought through his sufferings, and brought from under the power of death by a glorious resurrection. (1.) That his soul should not be left in hell, that is, his human spirit should not be long left, as other men's spirits are, in a state of separation from the body, but should, in a little time, return and be re-united to it, never to part again. (2.) That being God's holy One in a peculiar manner, sanctified to the work of redemption and perfectly free from sin, he should not see corruption nor feel it. This implies that he should not only be raised from the grave, but raised so soon that his dead body should not so much as being to corrupt, which, in the course of nature, it would have done if it had not been raised the third day. We, who have so much corruption in our souls, must expect that our bodies also will corrupt (Job 24:19); but that holy One of God who knew no sin saw no corruption. Under the law it was strictly ordered that those parts of the sacrifices which were not burnt upon the altar should by no means be kept till the third day, lest they should putrefy (Lev 7:15, Lev 7:18), which perhaps pointed at Christ's rising the third day, that he might not see corruption - neither was a bone of him broken.
4. That he should be abundantly recompensed for his sufferings, with the joy set before him, Psa 16:11. he was well assured, (1.) That he should not miss of his glory: "Thou wilt show me the path of life, and lead me to that life through this darksome valley." In confidence of this, when he gave up the ghost, he said, Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit; and, a little before, Father, glorify me with thy own self. (2.) That he should be received into the presence of God, to sit at his right hand. His being admitted into God's presence would be the acceptance of his service and his being set at his right hand the recompence of it. (3.) Thus, as a reward for the sorrows he underwent for our redemption, he should have a fulness of joy, and pleasures for evermore; not only the glory he had with God, as God, before all worlds, but the joy and pleasure of a Mediator, in seeing his seed, and the success and prosperity of his undertaking, Isa 53:10, Isa 53:11.
II. Christ being the Head of the body, the church, these verses may, for the most part, be applied to all good Christians, who are guided and animated by the Spirit of Christ; and, in singing them, when we have first given glory to Christ, in whom, to our everlasting comfort, they have had their accomplishment, we may then encourage and edify ourselves and one another with them, and may hence learn, 1. That it is our wisdom and duty to set the Lord always before us, and to see him continually at our right hand, wherever we are, to eye him as our chief good and highest end, our owner, ruler, and judge, our gracious benefactor, our sure guide and strict observer; and, while we do thus, we shall not be moved either from our duty or from our comfort. Blessed Paul set the Lord before him, when, though bonds and afflictions did await him, he could bravely say, None of these things move me, Act 20:24. 2. That, if our eyes be ever towards God, our hearts and tongues may ever rejoice in him; it is our own fault if they do not. If the heart rejoice in God, out of the abundance of that let the mouth speak, to his glory, and the edification of others. 3. That dying Christians, as well as a dying Christ, may cheerfully put off the body, in a believing expectation of a joyful resurrection: My flesh also shall rest in hope. Our bodies have little rest in this world, but in the grave they shall rest as in their beds, Isa 57:2. We have little to hope for from this life, but we shall rest in hope of a better life; we may put off the body in that hope. Death destroys the hope of man (Job 14:19), but not the hope of a good Christian, Pro 14:32. He has hope in his death, living hopes in dying moments, hopes that the body shall not be left for ever in the grave, but, though it see corruption for a time, it shall, at the end of the time, be raised to immortality; Christ's resurrection is an earnest of ours if we be his. 4. That those who live piously with God in their eye may die comfortably with heaven in their eye. In this world sorrow is our lot, but in heaven there is joy. All our joys here are empty and defective, but in heaven there is a fulness of joy. Our pleasures here are transient and momentary, and such is the nature of them that it is not fit they should last long; but those at God's right hand are pleasures for evermore; for they are the pleasures of immortal souls in the immediate vision and fruition of an eternal God.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain On vv8–11 I have set the Lord always before me, Not…
I have set the Lord always before me, Not his fear only, or the book of the law, as Jarchi interprets it, but the Lord himself; or, "I foresaw the Lord always before my face", Act 2:26; as Christ is set before men in the Gospel, to look unto as the object of faith and hope, to trust in and depend upon for life and salvation; so Jehovah the Father is the object which Christ set before him, and looked unto in the whole course of his life here on earth; he had always an eye to his glory, as the ultimate end of all his actions; and to his will, his orders, and commands, as the rule of them; and to his purposes, and counsel, and covenant, to accomplish them; and to his power, truth, and faithfulness, to assist, support, and encourage him in all his difficulties and most distressed circumstances;
because he is at my right hand: to counsel and instruct, to help, protect, and defend: the phrase is expressive of the nearness of God to Christ, his presence with him, and readiness to assist and stand by him against all his enemies; see Psa 109:31; so the Targum paraphrases it, "because his Shechinah rests upon me";
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I shall not be moved: as he was not from his place and nation, from the duty of his office, and the execution of it, by all the threats and menaces of men; nor from the fear, worship, and service of God, by all the temptations of Satan; nor from the cause of his people he had espoused, by all the terrors of death, the flaming sword of justice, and the wrath of God; but, in the midst and view of all, stood unshaken and unmoved; see Isa 42:4.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain On vv8–11 I have set - I have always presented him…
I have set - I have always presented him to my mind, as my witness and judge, as my patron and protector. Hitherto David seems to have spoken with respect to himself, but now he is transported by the spirit of prophecy, and carried above himself, to speak as a type of Christ, in whom this and the following verses were truly accomplished. Christ as man did always set his father's will and glory before him. Right-hand - To strengthen, protect, assist, and comfort me: as this assistance of God was necessary to Christ as man. Moved - Though the archers shoot grievously at me, and both men and devils seek my destruction, and God sets himself against me as an enemy, yet I am assured he will deliver me out of all my distresses.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain On vv8–11 Verse 8. I have set the Lord always before…
Verse 8. I have set the Lord always before me] This verse, and all to the end of Ps 16:11, are applied by St. Peter to the death and resurrection of Christ. Ac 2:25, c.
In all that our Lord did, said, or suffered, he kept the glory of the Father and the accomplishment of his purpose constantly in view. He tells us that he did not come down from heaven to do his own will, but the will of the Father who had sent him. See Joh 17:4.
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He is at my right hand] That is, I have his constant presence, approbation, and support. All this is spoken by Christ as man.
I shall not be moved.] Nothing can swerve me from my purpose nothing can prevent me from fulfilling the Divine counsel, in reference to the salvation of men.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain On vv8–11 Psa 16:8. I have set the Lord always before…
Psa 16:8. I have set the Lord always before me — I have always presented him to my mind as my witness and judge, as my patron and protector, in the discharge of my office, and in all my actions. Hitherto David seems to have spoken chiefly in his own person, and with special regard to himself, but now he appears to be transported by the Spirit of prophecy, to be carried above himself, and to have an eye to the man Christ Jesus only, who is, and was, the end of the law, and the great subject and scope of all the prophecies. In other words, having hitherto spoken of himself as a member, he now begins to speak of himself as a type of Christ, in whom this, and the following verses, were truly and fully accomplished. Christ, as man, did always set his Father’s will and glory before him, as he himself often declares: see Joh 10:18; Joh 14:31. He is at my right hand — To strengthen, protect, assist, and comfort me. And this assistance of God was necessary to Christ as man. I shall not be moved — Either from the discharge of my duty, or from the attainment of that glory and happiness which are prepared for me. Though archers shoot grievously at me, and both men and devils seek my destruction, and God sets himself against me as an enemy; yet I am assured, he will deliver me from all my distresses.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain On vv8–11 I have set the Lord always before me -…
I have set the Lord always before me - By night as well as by day; in my private meditations as well as in my public professions. I have regarded myself always as in the presence of God; I have endeavored always to feel that, his eye was upon me. This, too, is one of the certain characteristics of piety, that we always feel that we are in the presence of God, and that we always act as if his eye were upon us. Compare the notes at Act 2:25.
Because he is at my right hand - The right hand was regarded as the post of honor and dignity, but it is also mentioned as a position of defense or protection. To have one at our right hand is to have one near us who can defend us. Thus, in Psa 109:31, “He shall stand at the right hand of the poor, to save him,” etc. So Psa 110:5, “The Lord at thy right hand shall strike through kings in the day of his wrath.” Psa 121:5, “the Lord is thy Keeper; the Lord is thy shade upon thy right hand.” The idea is, that as we use the right hand in our “own” defense, we seem to have an additional and a needed helper when one is at our right hand. The sense here is, that the psalmist felt that God, as his Protector, was always near him; always ready to interpose for his defense. We have a somewhat similar expression when we say of anyone that he is “at hand;” that is, he is near us.
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I shall not be moved - I shall be safe; I shall not be disturbed by fear; I shall be protected from my enemies. See Psa 10:6; Psa 15:5. Compare Psa 46:5. The language here is that of one who has confidence in God in time of great calamities, and who feels that he is safe under the divine favor and protection.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain On vv8–11 With God's presence and aid he is sure of…
With God's presence and aid he is sure of safety (Psa 10:6; Psa 15:5; Joh 12:27-28; Heb 5:7-8).
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain On vv8–11 8. Set the Lord always before me—Acting as under…
8. Set the Lord always before me—Acting as under his eye, and “as seeing Him who is invisible,” Heb_11:27.
At my right hand— Close to me, and at the place for most opportune aid. This and the following verses are Messianic and evangelical in the highest sense. (See Act_2:25; and note.) As such, the interpretation must proceed upon a literal and historic sense only so far as that is an ectype of the prophetic and spiritual. It is impossible to compress the language of these verses within the limits of the personal history of David.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain On vv8–11 8. The true ‘practice of the Presence of God’…
8. The true ‘practice of the Presence of God’ (Psa_119:30; Psa_18:22). The LXX has, I beheld the Lord always before my face.
at my right hand] As advocate (Psa_109:31), or champion (Psa_110:5; Psa_121:5). A warrior defending another person would naturally stand on his right.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain On vv8–11 (8) At my right hand.—Comp. Psa_109:31; Psa_110:5; Psa_121:5. The…
(8) At my right hand.—Comp. Psa_109:31; Psa_110:5; Psa_121:5. The image seems to be a military one: the shield of the right-hand comrade is a protection to the man beside him.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain On vv8–11 I have set the Lord always before me. I…
I have set the Lord always before me. I have brought myself, that is, to realize the continual presence of God, alike in happiness and in trouble. I feel him to be ever with me. Because he is at my right hand (i.e. close to me, ready to protect and save), therefore I shall not be moved. Nothing will shake me or disturb me from my trust and confidence.
Vers. 8-11. The confidence of the psalmist"s faith in the future.
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The two main ideas of the writer are
(1) a sense of Divine privilege in having God as his chief Good; and
(2) a confiding, hopeful prayer for deliverance from death.
Not, of course, from death altogether; he could not hope to be finally delivered from the grave. The prayer therefore, must have been for deliverance, from impending, danger, from death that was then. threatened at that time, and for being conducted into and preserved in "the path of life." The application which has been made of the ninth and tenth verses to Christ by Peter and Paul has led to a misunderstanding of the original sense. They say that the prayer was fulfilled in Christ, and not in David; that David did see corruption, and that Christ did not. But the best Hebrew scholars say that it is a confident prayer, not to be given over to death, but to be preserved in the way of life. We must understand, of course, death at present; for it could not mean death altogether, nor deliverance from the grave after death. The general subject of these verses, then, is The confidence of the psalmists faith in the future, because he had chosen God as his chief Good.
I THE SENSE OF GOD"S PRESENCE INSPIRES A FEELING OF SAFETY. (Ver. 8) "Not in the moment of peril only, but at all times has he his eye fixed upon God." "God in David"s eyes is no abstraction, but a Person, real, living, and walking at his side," and able to protect him from danger. Have we such a sense of companionship with God? I shall not be moved neither in character, nor in purpose, nor in work.
II HE REJOICED IS THE CONFIDENCE THAT GOD WOULD NOT ALLOW HIM TO PERISH. (Vers. 9, 10) "Flesh" here, as always, means the living body never means a corpse. "Shall rest in hope," equivalent to "shall dwell in safety;" and must be understood of this life. No stress can be laid on the word "leave," which means "give over to." He is expressing the confidence "that God will not leave him to perish, will not give him up to be the prey of the grave, which was the design of his enemies. The lessons for us that God"s time is our time, and that he will not abandon us to our spiritual enemies, but will afford us effectual protection.
III HE REJOICED THAT GOD WOULD MAKE KNOWN TO HIM THE WAY TO LIFE. (Ver. 11) Not only preserve him in life, but lead him on to that life whose joy is beholding the Divine face, and partaking of the everlasting pleasures which are at his right hand. The idea of immortality springs out of the sense of his relationship to God; for he could not think that such a relationship could end with death. If we are the sons of God, that is the strongest guarantee that we shall continue to partake of God"s life, rich and manifold and everlasting. Christ said, "Because I live, ye shall live also." This passage has its highest fulfilment when applied to the resurrection of Christ. S.
The supreme choice of the soul.
"I have set the Lord always before me: because he is at my right hand, I shall not be moved." "I have set Christ always before me: because he is at my right hand, I shall not be moved.
I THIS IS TO MAKE THE JOURNEY OF LIFE FULL OF LIGHT. Pillar of cloud and fire. And this, in whatever view you look at this life whether as a stage on which work has to be done, or on which good has to be acquired, or as a journey to reach our destiny. By this light we can clearly see the nature of the work that must be done; the kind of good that must be sought; and the glorious destiny awaiting us. But let a man make himself or the world the light by which he walks, the guide he follows, then his work, his well-being, and the future all become dark. Some dark moments there will be, when God"s way is through the clouds or through the great deep.
II THIS WILL MAKE US TRULY STRONG. "I shall not be moved." We may know duty, self-interest, and the way to honour, and yet be too weak to follow them. Weakness of purpose and will is our misery and guilt. It is not merely our misfortune, but our sin. Importance of strength. Be strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might." The only way to become strong is by "looking unto Jesus." All other stimulants soon spend their strength and leave us prostrate. But the setting God always before us will endow us with all strength to resist all temptations, and all fortitude to endure.
III THIS IS TO MAKE THE AIM OF LIFE REALLY GREAT. Our lives are mostly paltry and little. We go about filled with little vanities and ambitions, aiming at little ends, and content with little results. Often under the guise of humility our larger aims are mostly of the depraved or secular sort wealth; social position; fame on the battlefield, or in the senate, or in literature. But to "have God always before us" is the real lasting greatness. This is the only true ideal of life.
IV THIS IS TO MAKE THE WAY OF LIFE SECURE. "Because he is at my right hand, I shall not be moved.
1. Not moved with fear.
2. Not moved from his hope.
3. Not moved from his righteousness. S.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Charles H. Spurgeon 1885 · Public Domain On vv8–11 Ver. 8. The fear of death at one time…
Ver. 8. The fear of death at one time cast its dark shadow over the soul of the Redeemer, and we read that, "he was heard in that he feared." There appeared unto him an angel, strengthening him; perhaps the heavenly messenger reassured him of his glorious resurrection as his people's surety, and of the eternal joy into which he should admit the flock redeemed by blood. Then hope shone full upon our Lord's soul, and, as recorded in these verses, he surveyed the future with holy confidence because he had a continued eye to Jehovah, and enjoyed his perpetual presence. He felt that, thus sustained, he could never be driven from his life's grand design; nor was he, for he stayed not his hand till he could say, "It is finished." What an infinite mercy was this for us! In this immovableness, caused by simple faith in the divine help, Jesus is to be viewed as our exemplar; to recognize the presence of the Lord is the duty of every believer;
I have set the Lord always before me; and to trust the Lord as our champion and guard is the privilege of every saint;
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because he is at my right hand, I shall not be moved. The apostle translates this passage, "I foresaw the Lord always before my face; " Ac 2:25; the eye of Jesus' faith could discern beforehand the continuance of divine support to his suffering Son, in such a degree that he should never be moved from the accomplishment of his purpose of redeeming his people. By the power of God at his right hand he foresaw that he should smite through all who rose up against him, and on that power he placed the firmest reliance.
Ver. 8. I have set the Lord always before me. David did not by fits and starts set the Lord before him; but he "always" set the Lord before him in his course; he had his eye upon the Lord, and so much the Hebrew word imports: I have equally set the Lord before me; that is the force of the original word, that is, I have set the Lord before me, at one time as well as another, without any irregular affections or passions, etc. In every place, in every condition, in every company, in every employment, and in every enjoyment, I have set the Lord equally before me; and this raised him, and this will raise any Christian, by degrees, to a very great height of holiness. Thomas Brooks.
Ver. 8. I have set the Lord always before me. Hebrew, I have equally set, or proposed. The apostle translates it, "I foresaw the Lord always before my face." Ac 2:25. I set the eye of my faith full upon him, and suffer it not to take to other things; I look him in the face, oculo irretorto, as the eagle looketh upon the sun; and oculo adamantino, with an eye of adamant, which turns only to one point: so here, I have equally set the Lord before me, without irregular affections and passions. And this was one of those lessons that his reins had taught him, that the Holy Spirit had dictated unto him. John Trapp.
Ver. 8. I have set the Lord ALWAYS before me. Like as the gnomon doth ever behold the north star, whether it be closed and shut up in a coffer of gold, silver, or wood, never losing its nature; so a faithful Christian man, whether he abound in wealth or be pinched with poverty, whether he be of high or low degree in this world, ought continually to have his faith and hope surely built and grounded upon Christ, and to have his heart and mind fast fixed and settled in him, and to follow him through thick and thin, through fire and water, through wars and peace, through hunger and cold, through friends and foes, through a thousand perils and dangers, through the surges and waves of envy, malice, hatred, evil speeches, railing sentences, contempt of the world, flesh, and devil, and even in death itself, be it never so bitter, cruel, and tyrannical, yet never to lose sight and view of Christ, never to give over faith, hope, and trust in him. Robert Cawdray.
Ver. 8. I have set the Lord always before me. By often thinking of God, the heart will be enticed into desires after him. Isa 26:8. "The desire of our soul is to thy name, and to the remembrance of thee; "and see what follows, Isa 26:9: "With my soul have I desired thee in the night; yea, with my spirit within me will I seek thee early." Love sets the soul on musing, and from musing to praying. Meditation is prayer in bullion, prayer in the oresoon melted and run into holy desires. The laden cloud soon drops into rain; the piece charged soon goes off when fire is put to it. A meditating soul is in proxima potentia to prayer. William Gurnall.
Ver. 8. I have set the Lord always before me, etc. He that by faith eyes God continually as his protector in trouble shall not be moved with any evil that he suffers, and he that eyes God by faith as his pattern in holiness, shall not be moved from doing that which is good. This thoughtthe Lord is at our right hand keeps us from turning either to the right hand or to the left. It is said of Enoch, that "he walked with God" (Ge 5:22), and though the history of his life be very short, yet it is said of him a second time (Ge 5:24), that "he walked with God." He walked so much with God that he walked as God: he did not "walk" (which kind of walking the apostle reproves, 1Co 3:3), "as men." He walked so little like the world, that his stay was little in the world. "He was not, "saith the text, "for God took him." He took him from the world to himself, or, as the author to the Hebrews reports it, "he was translated that he should not see death, for he had this testimony, that he pleased God." Joseph Caryl.
Ver. 8. Because he is at my right hand, etc. Of ourselves we stand not at any time, by his power we may overcome at all times. And when we are sorest assaulted he is ever ready at our right hand to support and stay us that we shall not fall. He hath well begun, and shall happily go forward in his work, who hath in truth begun. For true grace well planted in the heart, how weak soever, shall hold out for ever. All total decays come from thisthat the heart was never truly mollified, nor grace deeply and kindly rooted therein. John Ball.
Ver. 8. He is at my right hand. This phrase of speech is borrowed from those who, when they take upon them the patronage, defence, or tuition of any, will set them on their right hand, as in place of most safeguard. Experience confirmeth this in children, who in any imminent danger shroud and shelter themselves under their father's arms or hands, as under a sufficient buckler. Such was the estate of the man of God, as here appeareth, who was hemmed and hedged in with the power of God, both against present evils, and dangers to come. Richard Greenham.
Ver. 8. Even as a column or pillar is sometimes on thy right hand, and sometimes on thy left hand, because thou dost change thy standing, sitting or walking, for it is unmovable and keepeth one place; so God is sometimes favourable and bountiful unto thee, and sometimes seemeth to be wroth and angry with thee, because thou dost fall from virtue to vice, from obedience and humility to pride and presumption; for in the Lord there is no change, no, not so much as any shadow of change. He is immutable, always one and everlasting. If thou wilt bend thyself to obedience, and to a virtuous and godly life, thou shalt ever have him a strong rock, whereupon you may boldly build a castle and tower of defence. He will be unto thee a mighty pillar, bearing up heaven and earth, whereto you may lean and not be deceived, wherein you may trust and not be disappointed. He will ever be at thy right hand, that thou shalt not fall. He will take thy part, and will mightily defend thee against all enemies of thy body and of thy soul; but if thou wilt shake hands with virtue, and bid it adieu and farewell, and, forsaking the ways of God, wilt live as thou list, and follow thy own corruption, and make no conscience of aught thou doest, defiling and blemishing thyself with all manner of sin and iniquity, then be sure the Lord will appear unto thee in his fury and indignation. From his justice and judgments none shall ever be able to deliver thee. Robert Cawdray.
Ver. 8. Set the Lord always before you as
1. Your protector.
2. Your leader.
3. Your example.
4. Your observer.
William Jay.
Ver. 8-9. A sense of the divine presence our best support. It yields,
1. Good confidence concerning things without. I shall not be moved.
2. Good cheer within. My heart is glad.
3. Good music for the living tongue. My glory rejoiceth.
4. Good hope for the dying body. My flesh also, etc.
Psalms 16:9*
Ver. 8-9. A sense of the divine presence our best support. It yields,
1. Good confidence concerning things without. I shall not be moved.
2. Good cheer within. My heart is glad.
3. Good music for the living tongue. My glory rejoiceth.
4. Good hope for the dying body. My flesh also, etc.
Charles H. Spurgeon's The Treasury of David (1869–1885) — public domain. Psalms only. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain On vv8–11 I have set the Lord always before me.
Psa_16:8
I have set the Lord always before me.
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Facing God
Convictions are of two kinds. They are born of emergencies and experience. The former are instinctive, springing into life full grown. The latter mature slowly. A ship strikes a rock and begins to sink. The conviction of danger, and of possible destruction, takes shape at once in the minds of all on board. This is the conviction of emergency, But the conviction of a mans worth must come by experience, and must wait long for its maturity. Belief is not conviction, but only its germ. Conviction is faith in fruition, which takes time. The text is the utterance of such conviction, and it is the keynote of the whole Psalm.
I. It is of the greatest importance what that is which is continually before us. That which is constantly in a mans eye must help very largely to shape him. I have heard a very significant criticism on a certain picture, to the effect that, though it was a good piece of artistic work, it was not a good picture to live with. You would not wish to have hanging up in your sitting room, and constantly in sight of your children, a picture of Herodias with the head of John the Baptist, or of a crazed mother in the act of murdering her babe. You try to keep pictures of wholesome subjects as well as of beautiful forms before your childrens eyes; because you know that they are insensibly educated by familiarity with such things. In an age of few books, men and women learned mostly by the eye. It was not wholly nor mostly idolatry which filled the old churches up with pictures. The visitor to St. Marks, in Venice, may follow for himself the footsteps of the earlier catechumen; ]passing into the Christian temple through a vestibule of Old Testament history wrought in mosaic pictures, and then reading on the walls and domes within the truths of crucifixion, resurrection, the baptism of the Spirit, and the coming of the Lord to judgment,--all arranged in the order of Christian thought. The peasant who passed over the old wooden bridge over the torrent at Lucerne had daffy before him, in the painted compartments of the bridge, a reminder of that other stream which all must cross sooner or later. Nature sets her mark on character. If her surroundings are gloomy and savage they impart a sombre tone to the men who live among them:--Men tend to be narrowed or broadened by their daily task. The man who has columns of figures forever before him may easily degenerate into a mere calculating machine. If the thing which is constantly before us is larger and better than ourselves, its hourly presence rebukes our littleness and our badness, and works to assimilate us to itself. If it is worse than ourselves it draws downward. There was philosophy as well as enthusiasm in the apostles exhortation to run, looking unto Jesus, and in Paul keeping his eye on the prize of his high calling, and reaching forth to that which is before.
II. But it may be asked, is not God always before us? Can we help its being so? Assuredly we can. David does not say, The Lord is always, etc., but, I have set Him always, etc. His own will and act have had something to do with the matter. He has been at pains to bring God into the foreground, and to keep Him there. Because God is ever manifesting Himself, because every common bush is afire with Him, it does not follow that men recognise the fact. They do not. There is abundance of sweet music, but there are multitudes of people to whom it means no more than the rumble of the carts in the streets.
III. Thus, then, God will not be in any true sense before our face unless we set Him there. It needs special training, determination, and practice. There is a spiritual inertia to be overcome, and a perverse tendency. The bar of steel does not point naturally to the pole, but anywhere. It must be acted on from without, must have magnetic virtue imparted to it. And persistency is needed. I have set the Lord always before me. It was not enough that once or twice God was in the line of vision, He was to be kept there. A compass needle would be to a sailor of no more account than a knitting needle, if only by some shock it were made to point northwards. It is the fact of its always pointing there that gives it its value. And it is this fact of persistence which gives value to Davids saying. When a man has shut himself up to one thing as the source and strength of his happiness he will find out a great deal about that one thing. Thus did Robinson Crusoe, when he found out that he should have to live on his island. And so is it with men and God.
IV. Many are the discoveries which the man who sets the Lord always before him will make.
1. He finds Him self-revealed. In the Shinto temples in Japan the shrines contain no altars, pulpits, or pictures, but only a circular steel mirror. What it means is not known. But it would be an appropriate symbol for a Christian shrine. James draws a picture of a man beholding his natural face in a glass. The man who studies God studies self at the same time.
2. It carries with it a power of growth. For God is ever going before us and beckoning us on. A mountain is a constant temptation to climb, and when we find yet higher summits beyond we want to climb them also. And so is it in learning of God.
3. It engenders hope. Amid the darkness and vagueness of the Old Testament future, this Psalm is like a sweet flute note amid the crash and discord of a vast orchestra. I know of nothing more soothing than these verses. I shall not be moved; all is well, because He is at my right hand. (Marvin Vincent, D. D.)
The earthly and heavenly forms of companionship with God
Now, the two expressions, before me and in Thy presence, are substantially synonymous and convertible. Notice the other clause. He is at my right hand. At Thy right hand are pleasures for evermore. God before my face, and I before Gods face; God at my right hand, and I glad at His.
I. If we turn our faces to God here His face will shine on us yonder. I have set the Lord always before my eyes. Before Thy face is fulness of joy. The one is the summing up of the devout mans life on earth. What can the other be but the prophecy of the devout mans life in heaven? Observe how for us, here and now, circumstanced and occupied and distracted as we are, that clear consciousness of Gods presence will inevitably fade and shatter unless we are careful to preserve it. I have set the Lord,--that implies a great deal of definite effort, of fixed will, of stem resistance to and rejection of hindrances and things that come between. Gods presence cannot be proved. The consciousness of it depends upon our whole nature. It is what people call a moral thing; and it rises and falls like a sensitive thermometer, if a cloud comes between the bulb and the sun. You can crowd Him out of your minds by plunging yourselves fiercely into your daily duties, however sacred and elevated these may be. No more than the sunshine can be flashed back from a tarnished steel mirror, can the consciousness of Gods presence live in an impure soul. And the heart must be kept still, flee from agitation, from the storms of passion and the tyranny of eager desires. A cats paw that ruffles the surface of the lake shatters the image; and unless our hearts are quieted from earth they will never mirror heaven. Walk thou before Me, and be perfect, is at once a commandment and a promise. And they only are wise who answer, I will walk before the Lord in the land, and the light of the living. As I have already said, this thrilling and continual consciousness of the Divine presence is the surest basis for the expectation of immortal life. It is too precious to die; it is too great and pure and noble to have anything to fear from the accident of corporal death. So we come to consider that higher form of the Divine presence which is suggested by the contrast in my second text. In Thy presence is fulness of joy. But that presence is not secured by the individuals efforts, but is poured upon him in its effulgence from the throne itself. If I try to keep God in sight here, yonder He reveals Himself in all His greatness. We are not to understand that that future vision which is all expressed in these words of my second text--before Thee--consists in any measure which is analogous to the sight of the body. Nor are we, I suppose, to understand that then, any more than now, we are able to comprehend the incomprehensible and infinite. The face of God is the Scriptural expression for that side of the Divine nature which is capable of being manifested by Him, and apprehended by us; and Jesus Christ is the face of God. Yonder it is that we shall see Him as He is; and yonder it is the Christ whom, having not seen we love, and whom seeing we shall see the Father. There will be, as I suppose, new and unimaginable modes of manifestation, about which the less that we say the wiser we are. For if our experience here on earth teaches us anything, it teaches us that the body shuts us off from as much as it brings us into contact with; and that our senses are but like little slits in some grim old fortress, only wide enough to let in the requisite light and air, and that beyond their limits in both directions there are notes of which the vibrations are too numerous, or too few, in a given time to be apprehended by our ears; and rays in the spectrum at either end, which the human eye cannot see. So that, with new modes of manifestation and new capacities of apprehension, we shall draw nearer and nearer to the sun that we beheld here shining through the mists and the clouds. If we, amidst the shows and gauds of time and the crowds of thronging men and the distractions of our daily occupations, steadfastly seek and see the Lord, and have beams coming from Him, as a light shining in a dark place, He will lift us yonder, and turn the whole benediction of the sunlight Of His face upon us, and, saturated with the brightness, we shall walk in the light of His countenance and be amongst the people of the blessed.
II. If we keep the Lord at our right hand He will set us at His right hand. The emblem of the right hand has a double meaning in Scripture, one part of which applies more to our present and the other to our future. When we speak of having at our right hand anyone, we mean as counsellor, companion, strengthener, ally; as fellow fighter, guide, and defender. And it is in that capacity that we have to set the Lord at our right hand. If we have Him by our sides we are never alone. I suppose that the saddest fate for a man is to live solitary. I suppose that we mortal millions live alone after all companionship; like islands in a waste of ocean, with no communications. Ah! How many of us have known what it is for the one that stood at our right hand to vanish, to change. If we live so companioned, counselled, championed, by a God made present, not by His omnipresence but by our consciousness of it, then be sure of this, that the time will come when He who came to earth, as it were, and stood at our right hand, will lift us to the heavens, and plant us at His. I at His right hand. What does that mean? Let me quote you two or three plain words. The sheep at His right hand; the goats at His left. It means that. It means favour, acceptance in that great day of account. And he called his name Benjamin:--the son of his right hand. It means that; paternal love, a yearning heart, a longing to pour all a Fathers blessing on the child. And it means that the man, thus acquired and taken to the Fathers heart, is distinguished and honoured--grant that these, my two sons, may sit, the one at Thy right hand, the other at Thy left. Nor must we forget that there is still a loftier conception attached to this emblem of the right hand, which was not within the horizon of the Psalmist, but is within ours. Jesus Christ our Brother has been exalted to that session at Gods right hand, which indicates in disturbance, completed work, royalty and power. And He, hath said, I go to prepare a place for you, that where I am there ye may be also. So if He is at my right hand, as champion, I shall be at His right hand and share in His dominion.
III. If we stay ourselves on God, amidst struggle and change here, He will gladden us yonder with perpetual joys. Because He is at my right hand I shall not be moved. A very humble result to be accomplished by so great a thing as the actual presence of God at a mans side. Only this, that I will be able to keep my place, and stand steadfast. And there is only one thing that will make us steadfast, and that is that we should be, if I might use such a figure, bolted and lashed on to, or rather incorporated into, the changeless steadfastness of the unmoved God. God comes to us here, and is sword and shield; yonder He will be palm and crown. In Thy presence is fulness of joy. Every faculty and capacity will be satisfied, every yearning met, and nothing left to desire but the continuance which is guaranteed, and the increase as capacity increases, which is as certain. Here there is always something lacking; yonder there is fulness of joy and no satiety. Pleasures for evermore--both because there is an uninterrupted succession of such--like the ripples upon a sunlit sea, that all day long come rolling to the beach and break in music and sparkles of light; and because each pleasure is in itself perpetual, seeing that there is no possibility of these delights becoming stale and common. Thus begin with realising the Divine presence. We must begin all this on earth. The seed of heaven is sown in the furrows of this world. Philosophers talk to us about the law of continuity. That applies in regard to the life here and the life hereafter. If you ever are to come into the blessedness of the life yonder, you must begin with the life of faith in Jesus Christ here and now. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
God as a dominant idea
Dissipation is the parent of mediocrity. Because there is neither government nor concentration nor dominant idea in mens lives, they never do much, never grow any size. The subject before us is self-government by means of a dominant idea. A dominant idea is an idea which mixes itself with all other ideas, giving them its own colour and character; so that you cannot take out any thought from a mind in which a dominant idea exists and analyse it, but you shall find traces of this one idea. Constantly we meet with men who have one thought by which they explain everything, and they infect us with a dominant feeling that they are very tiresome. Restraining, ruling ideas spring up naturally. The emotions are the first parents of ideas. Primitive man hears a voice rebuking mere animal desire, which says, Thou shalt not cat of it, and the moment that voice is heard a moral nature has arisen and heaven becomes possible. The great majority of men allow their lives, as they do their beliefs, to go anyhow. They have never formed a distinct opinion as to the shape their life is to take. It is in our power to choose what idea we shall be ruled by, and, having chosen, it is in our power to make the idea a ruling one. We must determine to associate our idea with all our pleasures and labours; to bring it before our mind every day. And what shall be our dominant idea? The idea of God is our birthright. The idea of God stands upon exactly the same ground as all our other intuitions. Clifford says, Belief in God and in a future life is a source of refined and elevated pleasure to those who can hold it. Here is the idea ready to our hand. The idea is your birthright, but you have to make it dominant. (W. Page Roberts, M. A.)
The practice of the presence of God
God always sees us, whether we think of it or not. It makes no difference as to the fact whether we believe it or not. But it makes all the difference to ourselves. It makes just the difference between a godly man and an ungodly man. The truly religious man is he who has formed the habit of living under the influence of the thought of the presence of God. To set the Lord always before us is the secret of good living, is the true preparation for heaven. This is one reason why regular habits of prayer, of worship, of reading Gods Word, of Holy Communion are so helpful and cannot safely be neglected. They are means of drawing near to God, of coming into His presence. If we are doing anything, whether work or amusement, in which we could not bear to think of God, we may be sure that work or amusement is wrong. There is a beautiful custom in some countries. Sacred pictures are placed at intervals by the wayside, among the mountains and woods, in the streets of villages and towns. They are roughly made, badly painted and tinselly, but for all that they are reminders to people of holy thoughts; they are meant to call the mind of the passers-by in the midst of work or amusement to God. And how are we to set Him before us? How are we to think of Him? We may set Him before us in the completeness of His Divine Being--God the Father, the Son, the Spirit. Try to form the habit of setting the Lord always before you; for if He is at your right hand you shall never fall. Always in earnest prayer at the beginning of every day. Always when things go well with you, and in trouble, turning to Him as the one trusted help and refuge. (J. E. Vernon, M. A.)
The setting of the Lord before us
This and the following verses are quoted by Peter in his sermon on the Day of Pentecost.
1. Those who set the Lord always before them have an habitual impression of His all-seeing eye and immediate presence. David, we know, had this habitual impression. He was aware how highly important to him was this near presence of the Almighty, and what a beneficial, influence it shed over all his prospects.
2. It implies an habitual regard to the Lords will as the rule of our actions. Faithful Christians must make it their constant study to ascertain what is the will of God respecting themselves, and then set this will before them as the rule of their life. It should not only be a consideration with them, but their chief consideration. Those who make the will of God their rule cannot err. They look at it as sailors to the pole star, in order that they may direct their course thereby.
3. It implies making the Lords glory the end of all our aims. The glory of the Lord is that one object of surpassing importance which absorbs all other considerations. To set the Lord always before us is to keep this end always in view.
4. It implies making Him the object of our trust and dependence in all circumstances.
1. The practice of setting the Lord always before us is a bright evidence of the sincerity of our faith. Faith is a living and abiding principle, constantly in operation. Faith is that principle within the man which realises and embodies everything which is spiritual.
2. A constant sense of the presence of God is a sure means of counteracting the influence of the fear of man, which bringeth a snare.
3. A sense of the Lords constant presence would be a spur to our diligence and activity in endeavouring to work out our own salvation with fear and trembling. A persuasion that the eye of the Lord is in every place, beholding the evil and the good, would have a wonderful effect in exciting the runners of the Christian race to put forth their utmost powers to strain every nerve, that they may come in first to the goal. Now see a few lights in which you should make it your habit to set the Lord always before you--
(1)You are directed to set before yourselves the Lord as your chief good, the highest object of your aims.
(2) We are to look upon God, in Christ, as our owner. God possesses a right over us as our Maker and Preserver.
(3) We are to set the Lord Jesus before us as a Judge. We should not merely give a general assent to the truth of the judgment which will hereafter take place, and that Christ will occupy the throne then, but we are to consider Him as seated now upon the tribunal, and taking cognisance of all our transactions. (T. Chambers, M. A.)
Things that intercept the Divine presence
There are three things that, taken together, build up for us a very thick triple wall between us and God. There is sense, and all that it reveals to us; there are duties, necessary, possibly blessed, but actually often disturbing and limiting; and the thickest and most opaque of the three screens, there are the sins which dim our capacity, and check our inclination of realising the Divine presence. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
Thought must concentrate itself upon God
That needs that we shall shut out a great deal besides, as a man that wants to see something on the horizon will hold his palm above his eyes to exclude nearer objects and the glare that dazzles. It needs that we shall resolutely concentrate our thoughts upon Him. We have to be ignorant of a great deal if we would know any of the sciences, or of the practical arts. And we have to shear off not less if we would know the best knowledge, and be experts in the highest art in life. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
God near and yet afar
There may as well be no God, as far as a great many of us are concerned, in the most important matters of our lives, as a God that we never think about. He is not far from every one of us; but we may be very far from Him, and we are very far from Him unless by effort we set Him before us. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
The stability of the good man
The presumptuous man in one of the Psalms speaks thus: In my prosperity I said, I shall not be moved. But when prosperity fled self-confidence fled with it, and at length he learned to say, as he goes on to tell us, by Thy favour Thou hast made my mountain to stand strong. Thou didst hide Thy face, and I was troubled. Ah! think of the instability of our resolutions, think of the fluctuations of our thoughts, think of the surges of our emotions, think of the changes that by subtle degrees pass over us all, so as that the old mans grey hair and bowed form is less unlike his childish buoyancy and clustering ringlets than are his senile thoughts and memories to his juvenile expectations. And think of the forces that are brought to bear upon us, the shucks of calamity and sorrow by which we are beaten and battered, the blasts of temptation by which we are sometimes all but overthrown, the floods that come and beat upon our house. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
Steadfastness
That steadfastness will come to us by the actual communication of strength, and it will come to us because in the consciousness of the Divine presence there lies a charm that takes the glamour out of temptation and the pain out of all wounds. He being with us, the dazzling, treacherous brilliancies of earth cease to dazzle and betray. He being with us, sorrow itself and pain and all the ills that flesh is heir to have little power to shake the soul. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
Pleasure for evermore
That presence which amidst strife, warfare, weakness, and mutability manifested itself in its gift of steadfastness will then, amidst the tranquillity of heaven, manifest itself in a joy unlike all earthly joy, in that it is full; and yet more unlike, if I may say so, all earthly joy in that it is perpetual. Here there is ever something lacking in all our gladness, some guest at the table that sulks and will not partake and rejoice, some unlit window in the illumination, some limitation in the gladness; yonder it shall be full. I shall be satisfied when I awake in Thy likeness. Here, thank God! we have brooks by the way; there we shall stoop down and drink from the fountain, the ocean of joy. And the gladness is perpetual, in that, having nothing to do with physical causes or externals, there is no cause of change and no certainty of reaction. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
The habitual recognition of God
If we observe the pursuits of men of the world we see how they set their object, be it what it may, always before them. Success cannot be had without this. The same necessity exists in religion. If we would desire any real help now, and promised blessings hereafter, God must be to us ever present. Such piety is attended with Gods constant protection and friendship.
I. What it is to set the Lord always before us. It is to maintain a supreme and habitual regard for God, according to the relations which He sustains towards us. In the world, if a man has fixed his supreme regard on wealth, though he may often think and talk on other subjects, yet he never forgets this one. Let anything occur that will affect it, and you will always find that his object is before him. Now, it is in the same way that we set the Lord always before us. We shall always regard Him as infinitely perfect--as our Lawgiver and Sovereign; as our Creator, Preserver, and Benefactor; as our Redeemer and Sanctifier; as a covenant God; as our Judge and Rewarder. Now, so to habitually regard God as to secure the practical influence of all these perfections and relations of God upon us is to set the Lord always before us.
II. The advantage of so doing.
1. In the daily business of our life--to keep us diligent, just in our dealings, and honest in all our transactions.
2. In the more unimportant and ordinary occurrences of life--to keep us faithful in lifes little things, contented, cheerful, patient, devout.
3. In temptation we shall not be moved. It guards the heart against the world and Satan.
4. In holy obedience we shall be steadfast therein.
5. Preparation for all the scenes of life, for death and heaven. In prosperity he will remember God; in adversity he will trust God; in death he will be without fear; in the judgment day he will have confidence. And we can thus set God always before us. Is it safe or wise ever to forget Him? Do we thus set God always before us? What will they do from whose thoughts God is habitually excluded, when He shall be revealed in the clear light of eternity? (M. W. Taylor, D. D.)
Our great Example
The terms of this portion of the Psalm show distinctly that it is prophetic of the Messiah.
I. The first prediction is that Christ, when He should come, would set Jehovah continually before Him, i.e. He would live on earth realising by faith the presence of an unseen God, to dwell continually in His sight. Our Lord did this. He said, My meat is to do the will of Him that sent Me.
II. Jehovah would be at His right hand. We find our Lord continually sustaining Himself by the consoling presence of His Father. And all who tread in His steps may share in His consolation.
III. His heart would be glad. How could He be otherwise, when He knew the resources of the Father? Our Lord walked with God on earth, rejoicing in hope of the glory that should be revealed. So also may we, and do we?
IV. His flesh should rest in hope. This implies--
1. His death. His death was predicted no less than His triumph. He looked forward to His death, and repeatedly foretold it. And He resolutely met it. Let us ask for grace to enter into His spirit.
2. The limitation of deaths dominion. I have power, said He, to lay it (My life) down, and I have power to take it again. I lay it down of Myself. He did as He had said. He took again that dishonoured body, to be dishonoured no more.
V. God would guide him to the path of life. Thou wilt show Me, etc. The way of the grave did not seem the gate of life, but in reality it was so. Conclusion: He will bring us there. Decide for Him now. Sympathise with Him in His glory. (Baptist W. Noel.)
The habitual thought of God
David could only do this mentally. No man hath seen God at any time. And when he says always he does not mean that he was always actually thinking of Him. We cannot do this. We are not to be slothful in business. Yet David means that he believed and felt God to be near him, and that he would frequently hold communion with God. This leads to a state of mind in which we can readily recur to God in our thoughts. Let us do this, setting the Lord always before us.
I. As our protector. Our religious course is a constant warfare. We need the courage which only the presence of the Lord can impart.
II. As our leader.
III. As our example.
IV. As cult observer. Nothing escapes His notice. A heathen philosopher admonished his disciples to imagine that the eye of some illustrious personage was always upon them. But what is the eye of Plato to that of God? What stimulus this to zeal. (William Jay.)
On habitual remembrance of God
Our text directs our thoughts to the greatest of all Beings, the source of all happiness.
I. What it is to set God always before us. Represent to yourself the proceedings of men, who have proposed to themselves as their main pursuit the possession of some worldly attainment. Observe in what manner they set their object, be it what it may, always before their eyes. Contemplate the votary of science. Behold him absorbed in laborious researches: in the investigation of causes and effects; in the construction of theories, and the explanation of the phenomena of nature. Behold him day after day bending all the powers of his mind to the invention and application of mechanism; to the arrangement and superintendence of experiments; to the development and illustration of philosophical truth. At home and abroad, in cities and in the fields, in solitude and in society, behold him steadily bearing in mind the object to which he has dedicated his life. Survey the votary of ambition. Behold every nerve, every faculty, upon the stretch to supplant, to undermine, or to surpass his rivals, and to attain the dizzy preeminence to which he aspires. Receive then a lesson from the children of this world (Luk_16:8). Then wilt thou discern what it is to set the Lord thy God always before thee.
II. The different characters under which it is our duty to do this.
1. Regard Him as Creator. If you deem life a blessing, remember Him--
2. As your Preserver.
3. As your Redeemer and Sanctifier.
4. As your Sovereign and your Judge. See then that you obey Him, lest you be destroyed forever.
III. Give examples of the duty of thus setting the Lord always before you.
1. In prosperity--by being grateful to Him.
2. In adversity, sickness, and death--by trusting Him, submitting to Him patiently, remembering how little your sufferings in comparison with your sins. Look up to Him and be comforted.
3. In youth--by not withholding from the planter the prime of the fruit. When wilt thou serve thy God if not now?
4. In age--by remembering that the night cometh; work, while it is called today; seek mercy while yet it may be found.
5. Under all circumstances, in common duties, as well as in specially religious acts. If you are cultivating your farm; if you are selling your articles in the market or in a shop; if you are serving a master in your daily labour; if you are managing the concerns of your friend or of your country: remember that God is contemplating all your motive, all your thoughts, all your words, all your actions; and that for all your motives and thoughts and words and actions you will have to render an account at the judgment seat of Christ (Rev_20:12).
IV. The recompense. The Lord is at their right hand; they shall not be moved (1Sa_2:30; Joh_14:23). (T. Gisborne, M. A.)
The secret of a happy life
In the preceding verses we read, The lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places, yea, I have, etc. The speaker, therefore, is a very contented and happy man. How is it that he is able to feel so happy? Let us seek out the way. Perhaps his road may fit our feet. But who is the person who is thus singularly content? It is the Lord Jesus Christ. It is He who by the Spirit here speaks. All this is so much the more encouraging to us because if He, the Man of Sorrows, was nevertheless able to possess so sweet content, it must be possible for us, whose lot is not so bitter. We are not sent to make atonement for sin, and hence our sorrows are few compared with our Lords. Our text clearly imparts to us the secret of this peace, It is--
I. Living in the Lords presence always. I have set . . . always before me. Now, this means--
1. That we should make the Lords presence the greatest of all facts to us. Jesus did so. He saw God everywhere. From morning to evening, until you fall asleep as in the embraces of your God, see Him everywhere. This is happy living.
2. The making of Gods glory the one object of our lives.
3. So to live that the presence of God shall be the rule and support of our obedience. So Jesus did. The Masters eye is to many servants most important, to make them careful and diligent. For many are eye servers and men pleasers. But how should we live if God were seen looking on? He is looking on.
4. As the source from which we are to derive solace and comfort under every trial. This it was that made Him suffer and never complain.
5. That we are to hold perpetual communion with God. He was always in converse with the Father, and He could say, I knew that Thou hearest Me always.
6. We must follow this life, because of our delight and joy in it. Such a life cannot be lived in any other manner. If you find walking with God dull, then you have not the first essentials of such a life. You must be born again. If you are the Lords you will delight in living near to Him. You may lose your roll, like Christian in the arbour, and you may go back again and find it, lint it is very hard going back over the same ground. The hardest part of the road to heaven is that which has to be traversed three times: once when you go over it at first, a second time when you have to return with weeping to find your lost evidences, and then again when you have to make up for lost time. Abiding with God creates peace like a river.
II. Trusting always in the Lords presence, Because He is at my right hand I shall not be moved.
1. With any regret or remorse as to the past. Christ had many sorrows but no regrets.
2. From our consistency in the way of true religion.
3. With terror.
4. By temptation, so as to be swept into surprising sin.
5. So as to fail at last. Conclusion:
1. You who are not Christians, you are not happy. Set the Lord before you.
2. You who are not Christians, but think yourselves happy. How flail the pillar on which your happiness rests.
3. You Christians who are not happy; here is counsel for you.
4. You happy Christians, you can be happier still by coming nearer to God, This is heaven below. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Because He is at my right hand, I shall not be moved.
The faithful heart and the present God
This Psalm touches the high-water mark of the religious life in two aspects--its ardent devotion, and its clear certainty of eternal blessedness beyond the grave. These two are connected as cause and effect.
I. The effort of faith. I have set the Lord always before me. It took a dead lift of conscious effort for the Psalmist to keep himself continually in touch with that unseen God. This is the very essence of true religion. Mark how the Psalmist came to this effort. It was because his whole soul clave to God, with the intelligent and reasonable conviction and apprehension that in God alone was all he needed. If a man does not think about God and His love it is all one as if he had not Him and it.
II. The ally of faith. The second portion of the text is to be interpreted as the consequence of the effort. He is at my right hand. The Psalmist means that by the turning of his thoughts to God and the effort he makes--the effort of faith, imagination, love, and desire--to bring himself as close as he can to the great heart of the Father, he realises that presence at his side in an altogether different manner from that in which it is given to stones and rocks and birds and beasts and godless men. That Divine Presence is the source of all strength and blessedness. At my right hand; then I stand at His left, and close under the arm that carries the shield; and close by my instrument of activity, to direct my work; my Protector, my Ally, my Director.
III. The courageous stability of faith. Not be moved. That is true all round, in regard of all the things which may move and shake a man. The secret of a quiet heart is to keep ever near God. We shall not be moved by circumstances. How quietly we may live above the storms if we only live in God. The Psalmist feels that the great change from life to death will not move him, in so far as his union with God is concerned. A realisation of true communion with God is the guarantee that the man who has it shall never die. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Alexander MacLaren 1905 · Public Domain On vv8, 11
Psalms
ONE SAYING FROM THREE MEN
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GOD WITH US, AND WE WITH GOD
Psa 16:8, Psa 16:11.
There are, unquestionably, large tracts of the Old Testament in which the anticipation of immortality does not appear, and there are others in which its presence may be doubtful. But here there can be no hesitation, I think, as to the meaning of these words. If we regard them carefully, we shall not only see clearly the Psalmist’s hope of immortal life, but shall discern the process by which he came to it, and almost his very act of grasping at it; for the first verse of our text is manifestly the foundation of the second; and the facts of the one are the basis of the hopes of the other. That is made plain by the ‘therefore’ which, in one of the intervening verses, links the concluding rapturous anticipations with the previous expressions.
If, then, we observe that here, in these two verses which I have read, there is a very remarkable parallelism, we shall get still more strikingly the connection between the devout life here and the perfecting of the same hereafter. Note how, even in our translation, the latter verse is largely an echo of the former, and how much more distinctly that is the case if we make a little variation in the rendering, which brings it closer to the original. ‘I have set the Lord always before me,’ says the one,-that is the present. ‘In Thy presence is fulness of joy,’ says the other,-that is the consequent future. And the two words, which are rendered in the one case ‘before me’ and in the other case ‘in Thy presence,’ are, though not identical, so precisely synonymous that we may take them as meaning the same thing. So we might render ‘I have set the Lord always before my face’: ‘Before Thy face is fulness of joy.’ The other clause is, to an English reader, more obviously parallel: ‘Because He is at my right hand I shall not be moved’-shall be steadied here. ‘At Thy right hand are pleasures for evermore’-the steadfastness here merges into eternal delights hereafter.
So then, we have two conditions set before us, and the link between them made very plain. And I gather all that I have to say about these words into two statements. First, life here may be God’s presence with us, to make us steadfast. And secondly, if so, life hereafter will be our presence with God to make us glad. That is the Psalmist’s teaching, and I will try to enforce it.
I. First, then, life here may be God’s presence with us, to make us steadfast.
Mark the Psalmist’s language. ‘I have set the Lord always in front of me-before my face.’ Emphasis is placed on ‘set’ and ‘always.’ God is ever by our sides, but we may be very far away from Him, ‘though He be not far off from every one of us,’ and if we are to have Him blazing, clear and unobscured above and beyond all the mists and hubbub of earth, we shall need continual effort in order to keep Him in our sight. ‘I have set the Lord’-He permits me to put out my hand, as it were, and station Him where I want Him, that I may always have Him in my sight, and be able to look at Him and be calm and blessed.
You cannot do that, if you let the world, and wealth, and business, and anxieties, and ambitions, and cares, and sorrows, and duties, and family responsibilities, jostle and hustle Him out of your minds and hearts. You cannot do it if, like John Bunyan’s man with the muckrake, you keep your eyes always down on the straw at your feet, and never lift them to the crown above. How many men in Manchester walk its streets from year’s end to year’s end, and never look up to the sky except to see whether they must take their umbrellas with them or not? And so all the magnificence and beauty of the daily heavens, and the nightly gemming of the empty places with perpetually burning stars, are lost to them! So, God is blazing there in front of us, but unless we set ourselves to it, we shall never see Him. You have to look, by a conscious effort, over and away from the things that are ‘seen and temporal’ if you want to see the things that are ‘unseen and eternal.’
But if you disturb the whole tenor of your being by agitations and distractions and petty cares, or if you defile it by sensual and fleshly lusts, and animal propensities gratified, and poor, miserable, worldly ambitions and longings filling up your souls, then God can no more be visible before your face than the blessed sun can mirror himself in a storm-tossed sea or in a muddy puddle. The heart must be pure, and the heart must be still, and the mind must be detached from earth, and glued to Heaven, and the glasses of the telescope must be sedulously cleansed from dust, if we are to be blessed with the vision of God continuously before our face.
Then note, still further, that if thus we have made God present with us, by realising the fact of His presence, when He comes, He comes with His hands full. ‘I have set the Lord always before me,’ says the Psalmist. And then he goes on to say, ‘Because He is at my right hand.’ Not only in front of you, then, David, to be looked at, but at your side! What for? What do we summon some one to come and stand beside us for? In order that from his presence there may come help and succour and courage and confidence. And so God comes to the right hand of the man who honestly endeavours through all the confusions and bustles of life to realise His sweet and calming presence. Where He comes He comes to help; not to be a spectator, but an ally in the warfare; and whoever sets the Lord before him will have the Lord at his right hand.
And then, note, still further, the steadfastness which God brings. I have spoken of the effort which brings God. I speak now of the steadfastness which He brings by His coming. The Psalmist’s anticipation is a singularly modest one. ‘Because He is at my right hand I shall’-What? Be triumphant? No! Escape sorrows? No! Have my life filled with serenity? No! ‘I shall not be moved.’ That is the best I can hope for. To be able to stand on the spot, with steadfast convictions, with steadfast purposes, with steadfast actions-continuously in one direction; ‘having overcome all, to stand’-that is as much as the best of us can desire or expect, in this poor struggling life of ours.
What a profound consciousness of inward weakness and of outward antagonism there breathes in that humble and modest hope, as being the loftiest result of the presence of Omnipotence for our aid: ‘I shall not be moved’! When we think of our inner weakness, when we remember the fluctuations of our feelings and emotions, when we compare the ups and downs of our daily life, or when we think of the larger changes covering years, which affect all our outlooks, our thoughts, our plans; and how
‘We all are changed by still degrees,
All but the basis of the soul,’
it is much to say, ‘I shall not be moved.’ And when we think of the obstacles that surround us, of the storms that dash against us, how we are swept by surges of emotion that wash away everything before their imperious onrush, or swayed by blasts of temptation that break down the strongest defences, or smitten by the shocks of change and sorrow that crush the firmest hearts, it is much to say, in the face of a world pressing upon us with the force of the wind in a cyclone, that our poor, feeble reed shall stand upright and ‘not be moved’ in the fiercest blast. ‘What went ye out for to see?’ ‘A reed shaken with the wind’-that is humanity. ‘Behold! I have made thee an iron pillar and brazen walls, and they shall fight against thee, but they shall not prevail’-that is weak man, stiffened into uprightness, and rooted in steadfastness by the touch of the hand of a present God.
And, brother! there is nothing else that will stay a man’s soul. The holdfast cannot be a part of the chain. It must be fastened to a fixed point. The anchor that is to keep the ship of your life from dragging and finding itself, when the morning breaks, a ghastly wreck upon the reef, must be outside of yourself, and the cable of it must be wrapped round the throne of God. The anchor of the soul, sure and steadfast, which will neither break nor drag, can only be firm when it ‘enters into that within the veil.’ God, and God only, can thus make us strong! So, dear friends, let us see to it that we fasten our aims and purposes, our faith and love, our submission and obedience, upon that mighty Helper who will be with us and make us strong, that we may ‘stand fast in the Lord and in the power of His might.’
II. Now, secondly, notice how, if so, life hereafter will be our presence with God, to make us glad.
I have already pointed out briefly the connection between these two portions of my text, and I need only remark here that the link which holds them together is very obvious. If a man loves God, and trusts Him, and ‘walks with Him,’ after the fashion described in our former verse, then there will spring up, irrepressible and unconquerable, a conviction in that man’s soul that this sweet and strong communion, which makes so much of the blessedness of life, must last after death. Anything is conceivable rather than that a man who walks with God shall cease to be! Rather, when he ‘is not’ any more ‘found’ among men, it is only because ‘God took him.’ Thus the emotions and experiences of a truly devout soul are {apart from the great revelation in Jesus Christ which hath brought ‘life and immortality to light’} the best evidence and confirmation of the anticipation of immortal life. It cannot be, unless our whole intellectual faculties are to be put into utter confusion, that such an experience as that of the man who loves God, and tries to trust Him, and walk before Him, is destined to be brought to nothingness with the mere dissolution of this earthly frame. The greatness and the smallness, the achievements and the failures, of the religious life as we see it here, all bear upon their front the mark of imperfection, and in their imperfection prophesy and proclaim a future completion. Because it is so great in itself, and because, being so great, its developments and influence are so strangely and sadly checked, the faith that knits a man to Christ demands eternity for its duration, and infinitude for its perfection. Thus, he that says ‘I have set the Lord always before me,’ goes on to say, with an undeniable accuracy of inference, ‘Therefore Thou wilt not leave my soul in the under world.’ God is not going to forget the soul that clave to Him, and anything is believable sooner than that.
Our texts not only assert this connection and base the confidence of immortality on the present experiences of the spirit that trusts in God, but also give the outline, at least, of the correspondences between the imperfections of the present and the perfectnesses of the future. And I cast this into two or three words before I close.
This is the first of them. If you will turn your faces to God, amidst all the flaunting splendours and vain shows and fleeting possessions of this present, His face will dawn on you yonder. We can say but little of what is meant by such a hope as that. But only this we can say, that there will be, as yet unimaginable, new wealths of revelation of the Father, and to match them, as yet unimaginable new inlets of apprehension and perception upon our parts, so that the sweetest, clearest, closest, most satisfying vision of God that has ever dawned on sad souls here, shall be but ‘as in a glass darkly’ compared with that face to face sight. We live away out on the far-off outskirts of the system where those great planets plough along their slow orbits, and turn their languid rotations at distances that imagination faints in contemplating, and the light and the heat and the life that reach them are infinitesimally small. We shall be shifted into the orb that is nearest the sun; and oh! what a rapture of light and life and heat will come to our amazed spirits: ‘I have set the Lord always before me.’ Twilight though the light has been, I have tried to keep it. I shall be of the sons of light close to the Throne and shall see Thy face. I shall be satisfied when I wake out of this sleep of life into Thy likeness.
Then, again, if you will keep God at your right hand here, He will set you on His hereafter. Keep Him here for your Companion, for your Ally, for your Advocate, to breathe strength into you by the touch of His hand, as some feeble man, leaning upon a stronger arm, may be upheld. If you will do that, then the place where the favoured servants stand will be yours; the place where trusted counsellors stand will be yours; the place where the sheep stand will be yours; the place where the Shepherd sits will be yours; for He to whom it is said, ‘Sit Thou at My right hand till I make Thine enemies Thy footstool,’ says to us, ‘Where I am there shall also My servant be.’ Keep God by your sides, and you will be lifted to Christ’s place at the right hand of the Majesty on high.
Lastly, if we let ourselves be stayed by God amidst the struggle and difficulty, we shall be gladdened by Him with perpetual joys. The emphasis of the last words of my text is rather on the adjectives than on the nouns-full joy, eternal pleasure. And how both characteristics contradict the experiences of earth, even the gladdest, which we fain would make permanent! For I suppose that no earthly joy is either central, reaching the deepest self, or circumferential, embracing the whole being of a man, but that only God can so go into the depths of my soul as that from His throne there He can flood the whole of my nature with felicity and peace. In all other gladnesses there is always in the landscape one bit of sullen shadow somewhere or other, unparticipant of the light, while all around is blazing. And we need that He should come to make us blessed.
Joys here are no more lasting than they are complete. As one who only too sadly proved the truth of his own words, burning out his life before he was six-and-thirty, has said-
‘Pleasures are like poppies spread,
You seize the flower, its bloom is shed!
Or like the snowflake in the river.
A moment white-then gone for ever.’
Oh! my friend, ‘why do ye spend your money for that which is not bread?’ The life of faith on earth is the beginning, and only the beginning, of that life of calm and complete felicity in the heavenly places.
I have shown you the ladder’s foot, ‘I have set the Lord always before me.’ The top round reaches the throne of God, and whoever begins at the bottom, and holds fast the beginning of his confidence firm unto the end, for him the great promise of the Master will come true, and Christ’s ‘joy will remain in him and his joy shall be full.’
Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
C. I. Scofield 1917 · Public Domain On vv9–10 thy flesh
thy flesh
The 16th Psalm is a prediction of the resurrection of the King. As a prophet David understood that, not at His first advent, but at some time subsequent to His death and resurrection Messiah would assume the Davidic throne. See Act 2:25-31; Luk 1:32; Luk 1:33; Act 15:13-17. See "Davidic Covenant," (See Scofield "2Sa 7:14"); "Kingdom (O.T.)," See Scofield "Zec 12:8".
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See Psalms 22, next in order of the Messianic Psalms.
The Scofield Reference Bible (1917 edition), notes by C. I. Scofield — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv9, 11 General Information:
General Information:
David continues to speak to God.
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my heart is glad
Here the "heart" represents the speaker's thoughts and emotions. AT: "Therefore I am glad" (See: Metonymy)
my glory is rejoicing
Possible meanings are 1) the word "glory" represents the honor a person feels. AT: "I am honored to rejoice in God" or 2) the word translated "glory" really means "liver" and represents the speaker's emotions. AT: "I am rejoicing"
translationWords
heart
life
soul
Hades
covenant faithfulness
pit
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv9–11 16:9-11 Knowing that not even death can separate him…
16:9-11 Knowing that not even death can separate him from the Lord strengthens the psalmist’s confidence. He fears a separation (see 13:3-4), but he remains confident of seeing the Lord (see 11:7).
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.