1 Preserve me, O God, for in you I take refuge.
David begins by calling on God for protection, since God is His refuge.
2 I say to the LORD, “You are my Lord; I have no good apart from you.”
He declares His allegiance to God and His love for Him. He owns that the Lord is his highest and greatest good. It is so good from a sincere heart to express our admiration for God, and not jump right into our requests when we spend time with Him! Do we feel like this about God?
3 As for the saints in the land, they are the excellent ones, in whom is all my delight.
David’s delight, other than the Lord himself, is to be in the company of those who feel the same way about God as he does. The Lord is his greatest love, yes, but then he delights in those who are being made like the Lord in this world. Fellowship is a blessing we are appreciating more and more in Grace Church, now that we are temporarily deprived of face-to-face interaction - hand-shakes and hugs - and must resort to other approaches which are not as good! How we should thank the Lord for our fellowship with the saints!
4 The sorrows of those who run after another god shall multiply; their drink offerings of blood I will not pour out or take their names on my lips. 5 The LORD is my chosen portion and my cup; you hold my lot.
Now he pauses to think about those who do not have the Lord as their greatest good and do not delight in fellowship with the saints. Rather, they run after other gods, and whose sorrows and misery increase. Compared with the blessings God’s children know in this life, which David has mentioned, the lot of the unbeliever is misery. But when we all pass into the age to come, the contrast becomes stark indeed. So David renews his resolve not to follow them down their idolatrous path. He is determined to have God as his portion, and to be content in the knowledge that God holds his future in his hands. That’s a good thing for us to do, too - knowing that whatever happens in our lives is from our Highest Good, for our ultimate best.
He spends the rest of the Psalm contemplating what this actually means for him in practice - and in large measure, it means the same for us!
6 The lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; indeed, I have a beautiful inheritance.
He is thinking about his possession in the Lord - the boundary lines that mark out the territory of which he is an heir by God’s grace - and everything that falls within those lines is beautiful indeed! Have you thought about your inheritance in Christ lately - the marked-out, heavenly territory of which we are co-heirs together with Christ - your “mansion in glory,” if you like? It defies human speech to describe it appropriately, but we have a glimpse of its splendor and glory in Revelation 21 and 22 - and this is what Jesus has purchased for us with His blood!
7 I bless the LORD who gives me counsel; in the night also my heart instructs me.
David also realizes that he has God’s Spirit and His Word to instruct him and to give him wisdom day and night while he remains in this world, and he blesses God for this. We have the same Spirit and Word to direct us - blessings worth thinking about and praising God for!
8 I have set the LORD always before me; because he is at my right hand, I shall not be shaken.
He has his eyes turned to the Lord and he knows that with the Lord as his refuge and strength, he shall not be moved. We stumble and fall when we take our eyes off the Lord and look somewhere else for strength, but when we lean on Him, His power is made perfect in weakness!
9 Therefore my heart is glad, and my whole being rejoices;
And as David reflects on all these blessings that are his now in the Lord, he’s completely caught up with joy - his whole being rejoices! And as we focus our minds and our hearts on the Lord and our secure inheritance in Him, our souls will be similarly expanded with joy and gladness!
my flesh also dwells secure. 10 For you will not abandon my soul to Sheol, or let your holy one see corruption.
Looking beyond the grave, David knows that his body also is secure in the Lord and will not be abandoned. There will be an everlasting kingdom which Christ, as glorious Fore-runner, will usher in - in which we shall all certainly share as members of the new humanity, all with glorified spirits and spotless resurrection bodies, all renewed in Christ’s likeness!
11 You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.
And so David is thrilled again that this secure and certain path of life is being made known to him and he anticipates (as we may) that “Our God is the end of the journey,” as a hymn-writer put it. We will enter into the very presence of his Lord and enjoy Him, our greatest Good, and all the pleasures of heaven forever!
