June 2, 2013
Psalms 16:2 – “I say to the Lord, “You are my Lord, apart
from you I have no good thing.”
Just reading the verse, we
already have many interpretations and points of view in regards to the message
it brings. In essence, even as little as one verse or as big as a whole
passage, God has a personal message for those who read and meditate on His
word.
In truth, I don’t have a
background about the Psalms 16 although commentaries say that it is a psalm of atonement.
The message I’m about to share to you came from Don Carson’s For the Love of God,
Volume 1.This book, if read day after day guarantees that within two years, you’d
be able to finish reading the Bible. Don Carson’s book is where my previous message
about Genesis 5 came from and this time Psalms 16:2.
Part 1 – Goodness Defined
Let me ask you a question, what,
for you is the meaning of good? All of us has a different explanation of good.
As one said, it may be something that gives you pleasure, whether it be wrong
or bad. Another question, what makes something good? As again, we all have our
own answers for this question, as the previous one. One said that something is
good if it does not cause harm and yet it contradicts the first one’s statement
of the meaning of good (Something that gives you pleasure, whether it be wrong
or bad). I’m not saying that these answers are right nor wrong, they are our
own opinions. What can be a good thing for yourself could be considered as bad for
others. We all have different points of view for these things. But what does
the Bible say? If it is not for God, all things are useless, are nothing. The
things that you have, or the things that you do, if it is not for God, it is worthless.
People, in general, keep things even make it their favorite, if it is useful
for them, whether intellectually (such as a book), emotionally (such as a teddy
bear), or physically (such as a pair of shorts). But these good “thing” that we
may have, remember that there is always something better than this, far, far
better. No other than our Creator of course, for is it not He who made these
things and provided them to you (directly or indirectly)? David goes to say in
this verse that there is no other good thing than the God he worships. Which is
very true, no one can compare to the goodness that our God has for His
creations. And yet, all the goodness that you see in your environment, because
of our sin, because of Satan, can become something that replaces God. A good
thing that becomes a god-thing. Example, the sun. It is a very good thing for
it function to gives us light and warmth, it is a main source of energy for food
production of the plants, and it activates the Vitamin D in our body to help in
calcium absorption. Is it not a very good and useful thing? And yet in ancient
times, the ancient Egyptians, practice polytheism, worshiped the sun whom they
named Ra clearly breaking the first commandment which is to “Love the LORD your
God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength”
(Deuteronomy 6:5). And there were other civilizations who tended to worship
nature, the moon, the stars, the trees, etc. Even now, although it’s rare to
see people explicitly worshiping the sun and the moon and the stars, our
worship has changed its form, from nature to gadgets to vices to all sorts of addiction
and even the good things such as food, career, and family, are being worshiped by people. Idolatry, bright as day. If we remove God from these good things,
what will be left then? No goodness, nothing even. I know a friend who told me
that every time he watched a movie, he tries to find the Gospel in it because if
he watches it as it is, it will lose its goodness. What made the movie good and
beautiful in his eyes was the Gospel that he saw in it. Take God out of your
life and you will be left with nothing. That’s why David says, “You are my
Lord, apart from you I have no good thing”.
Part 2 – Apart From You
Let’s define the meaning of “Apart
from you..”. Sometimes people say to other people, “Because of me, you wouldn't even be in that position.” But David says, “Apart from you my Lord, I have nothing
good.” And it reminds me of a verse in John 15:5. As long as the branches remain in the vine, it
will have a continuous supply of nutrients. But if you cut a branch from the
vine, the vine can still produce more branches but the branch, it won’t survive.
If we separate ourselves from the Lord, we too, slowly die (spiritually of
course), and our only usefulness is to be used as fuel. Despite our sinfulness,
our God is a very good God for He provided His son Jesus to cover our sinfulness.
Jesus who sinless, good, and everything that is perfect, sent to be sacrificed,
took away all our sins, bore them, and died on the cross for us and for his
Father. These things that we have, apart from the Lord, we are nothing, we can
do nothing good. So let me end this message with a song that I composed, “Without
You, I Am Nothing”.
Without You, I Am
Nothing
Verse
You are my
Light, which is my guide, Jesus
You are my
Rock, in which is stand, oh God
You are the
King that I serve
You are our Lord who saves the word
Chorus
Without You,
I am lost
Without You,
I am nothing
Without You,
I can’t stand
Without you
Lord, I am nothing
Repeat Verse and
Chorus
Bridge
You are the
goodness in me
You are my
strength, my treasure, my life, my everything (2x)
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